“Who? Joe?”
“Yes. Are you going to—to whip him?”
“I think likely I shall,” answered the old man. “He’s got to be taught a lesson. But I’ll wait until morning to do it. I want to do it without getting angry at him.”
Mrs. Blackford breathed a silent sigh of relief. She felt that if the deacon put off the whipping until the next day he might not do it at all. And she dreaded to have it happen. She realized, if her husband did not, that Joe was too big now to be whipped.
The evening began to lengthen into night, and the deacon prepared for bed. Joe was listening in his room for a cessation of sounds that would indicate it would be safe for him to attempt to leave. Finally all was still.
Joe cautiously arose and dressed in the dark. There was a half-moon, and it gave him illumination enough to see without making a light in his room. Putting on his best suit, Joe made a bundle of Tom’s clothing. The lad had already packed a valise with his few belongings.
With a length of strong fish-line he lowered his valise from the window to the ground below. He was glad the deacon’s bedroom was on the other side of the house. Next Joe lowered the bundle, and then he prepared to make his way down to the ground.
To do this he was going to lower himself, hand over hand, on the lightning rod. The deacon was old-fashioned enough to have one of these contrivances on his house, and the twisted, galvanized rod, in its glass insulating supports, was close to Joe’s window.
To a youth of Joe’s muscle and ability in gymnastics it was no feat at all to climb down the lightning rod. On the contrary, Joe thought it fun—or he would have under pleasanter circumstances.
“I’ll just give this a pull or two, to make sure it will hold me,” Joe mused. “I don’t want to come a cropper.”