Joe paused in his thinking. Again his gaze wandered off toward the burned factory, and again he saw, in fancy, the huddled form of the magician. “That’s what I’ll do!” exclaimed Joe, this time half aloud. “I won’t wait for him to give me a beating, which I think he’s planning to do. No, sir, I won’t wait for that. I’m glad I thought of it. It’s about the only thing left for me to do. I’ve about reached the limit.”
Joe went to his closet and took out a suit of clothes. It was his “best,” kept for Sundays and special occasions. Then he went to his bureau and began to look among the drawers.
“The only thing is about getting this suit back to Tom,” mused Joe. “I’ll have to do that. If I left it here they might not give it to him.”
He paused to listen once more to the murmur of voices below him. The deacon’s dull and rumbly and his wife’s shriller.
“Still at it!” said Joe grimly.
From a far and dark corner of the closet Joe brought out an old valise. It had not often been used, for Joe seldom traveled. Deacon Blackford had no money to waste on such “foolishness.”
“That’ll hold about all I’ll want to take with me,” Joe mused. “Now, the next question is, can I get out of here without their suspecting? Of course, I’ll have to do it after dark.”
Joe went to a window and looked out. What he saw satisfied him.
“I wouldn’t be much of a climber if I couldn’t get down that,” he murmured with a smile.
“It isn’t as if this were the first trouble we’d had,” mused Joe, “nor the first time he’d punished me unjustly.”