And with the words came another thought. He had killed Kineally! They would arrest him! Into his vision flashed the picture of a chair with straps on its arms, legs, and back, and a few solemn spectators gathered about. No, they mustn’t catch him! He must get away!
Moving hurriedly about, and ever averting his gaze from the form on the floor, he donned a few garments for street wear. Ready to leave, he spied the picture upon the bureau. He snatched it up and turned it over. Penned on its back in a feminine hand was: “From Dora to Bob.”
Hastily tucking it into his inside pocket, he opened the door and stepped into the hall. His nerveless fingers swung the door shut, and he trod softly down the stairs.
When the evening train coughed into Farmhill station, Reynolds, clad in a dark suit, and with his cloth hat pulled far down over his eyes, swung off on the side farthest from the station, and making a detour to avoid the well-lighted section of the town, he struck out into the country.
Once during his flight, while changing trains at a junction, he had heard one diminutive newsboy mention the name “Reynolds” to another grimy-faced little urchin, and Rube had stolen a sidelong glance at the bunch of papers folded beneath the boy’s arm. The paper, being folded in the middle, prevented him from reading the whole of the big black headline, but on the side of the sheet near to him he spelled out: “M-U-R-D——”
As he tramped along in the soft dust of the country road, with the frogs and insects peeping and shrilling strange noises out of the dusk of the night, his thoughts rose in rebellion. It wasn’t murder! Murder was something fearful—something repulsive, and he hadn’t intended to—to kill Kineally. He had struck in self-defense! He strove to convince himself that such had been the case, but every frog—every insect kept shrilling: “Murder—murder—it was murder!”
Not until he reached the Whately farm did he realize that it would be impossible for him to see Dora that night. The chimes of a church in a distant town were sounding the curfew hour, when he paused by the stone wall encircling that part of the Whately farm. Why he had returned to Farmhill, he did not know. Something had seemed to draw him to that little town in the valley; and he wanted to see Dora just once more before disappearing to some far corner of the world, where no one would know him, where no one could find him.
For a moment he thought of boldly entering the house, but he quickly dismissed the idea. They must have read the papers and knew of his crime. Noel Whately and his wife had always liked young Bob Reynolds; and Dora—he knew that Dora’s regard was more than friendship for him, but he hesitated to thrust himself, branded as a criminal, into that family circle.
He easily vaulted the stone wall and moved around the house to the barn. As he picked his way across the barn-yard, another thought came to him. What folly his return to Farmhill was! It would only make more painful the breaking of the ties!