A hand was extended, and the speaker felt himself seized by the ear, and, glancing up, looked into his father's face.
“You come along home with me, son,” said the undertaker. “Your ma 'll have a word to say to you. She's been wanting to lay her hands on you all day.”
“See you later, Spide,” Clarence managed to gasp, and then he moved off with a certain jaunty buoyancy, as though he trod on air.
CHAPTER XXI
WHEN Roger Oakley fled from Antioch on the night of the murder he was resolved that, happen what might, he would not be taken.
For half an hour he traversed back alleys and grass-grown “side streets,” seeing no one and unseen, and presently found himself to the north of the town.
Then he sat down to rest and consider the situation.
He was on the smooth, round top of a hill-side. At his back were woods and fields, while down in the hollow below him, beyond a middle space that was neither town nor country, he saw the lights of Antioch twinkling among the trees. Dannie was there somewhere, wondering why he did not return. Nearer at hand, across a narrow lane, where the rag-weed and jimson and pokeberry flourished rankly, was the cemetery.