University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FLIGHT.

ABOUT ten days after Ralph's return to Flat
Creek things came to a crisis.

The master was rather relieved at first to have
the crisis come. He had been holding juvenile
Flat Creek under his feet by sheer force of will.
And such an exercise of “psychic power” is very exhausting.
In racing on the Ohio the engineer sometimes sends the
largest of the firemen to hold the safety-valve down, and this
he does by hanging himself to the lever by his hands. Ralph
felt that he had been holding the safety - valve down, and
that he was so weary of the operation that an explosion
would be a real relief. He was a little tired of having everybody
look at him as a thief. It was a little irksome to know
that new bolts were put on the doors of the houses in which
he had staid. And now that Shocky was gone, and Bud had
turned against him, and Aunt Matilda suspected him, and
even poor, weak, exquisite Walter Johnson would not associate

[ILLUSTRATION]

HANNAH WITH A WHITE, WHITE FACE.

[Description: 556EAF. Illustration page. Engraving of a woman outside in the woods handing something to a man.]

with him, he felt himself an outlaw indeed. He would have
gone away to Texas or the new gold-fields in California had
it not been for one thing. That letter on blue foolscap paper
kept a little warmth in his heart.

His course from school on the evening that something happened
lay through the sugar-camp. Among the dark trunks
of the maples, solemn and lofty pillars, he debated the case.
To stay, or to flee? The worn nerves could not keep their
present tension much longer.

It was just by the brook, or, as they say in Indiana, the
“branch,” that something happened which brought him to a
sudden decision. Ralph never afterward could forget that
brook. It was a swift-running little stream, that did not babble
blatantly over the stones. It ran through a thicket of
willows, through the sugar-camp, and out into Means's pasture.
Ralph had just passed through the thicket, had just crossed
the brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, as
he emerged from the water - willows on the other side, he
started with a sudden shock. For there was Hannah, with a
white, white face, holding out a little note folded like an old-fashioned
thumb-paper.

“Go quick!” she stammered as she slipped it into Ralph's
hand, inadvertently touching his fingers with her own—a touch
that went tingling through the school-master's nerves. But
she had hardly said the words until she was gone down the
brookside path and over into the pasture. A few minutes
afterward she drove the cows up into the lot and meekly
took her scolding from Mrs. Means for being gone sech an
awful long time, like a lazy, good-fer-nothin' piece of goods
that she was.

Ralph opened the thumb-paper note, written on a page torn
from an old copy-book, in Bud's “hand-write” and running:

The first question with Ralph was whether he could depend
on Bud. But he soon made up his mind that treachery of this
sort was not one of his traits. He had mourned over the
destruction of Bud's good resolutions by Martha Hawkins's refusal,
and being a disinterested party he could have comforted
Bud by explaining Martha's “mitten.” But he felt sure that
Bud was not treacherous. It was a relief, then, as he stood
there to know that the false truce was over, and worst had
come to worst.

His first impulse was to stay and fight. But his nerves were
not strong enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He
seemed to see a man behind every maple-trunk. Darkness
was fast coming on, and he knew that his absence from supper
at his boarding-place could not fail to excite suspicion.
There was no time to be lost. So he started.

Let one once start to run from a danger, and panic is apt
to ensue. The forests, the stalk-fields, the dark hollows
through which he passed, seemed to be peopled with terrors.
He knew Small and Jones well enough to know that every
avenue of escape would be carefully picketed. So there was
nothing to do but to take the shortest path to the old trysting-place,
the Spring-in-rock.

Here he sat and shook with terror. Mad with himself, he
inly denounced himself for a coward. But the effect was
really a physical one. The chill and panic now were the reaction
from the previous strain.

For when the sound of his pursuers' voices broke upon his
ears early in the evening, Ralph shook no more; the warm
blood set back again toward the extremities, and his self-control
returned when he needed it. He gathered some stones
about him, as the only weapons of defense at hand. The mob
was on the cliff above. But he thought that he heard footsteps
in the bed of the creek below. If this were so, there could be
no doubt that his hiding-place was suspected.

“O Hank!” shouted Bud from the top of the cliff to some
one in the creek below, “be sure to look at the Spring-in-rock—I
think he's there.”

This hint was not lost on Ralph, who speedily changed his
quarters by climbing up to a secluded, shelflike ledge above the
spring. He was none too soon, for Pete Jones and Hank Banta
were soon looking all around the spring for him, while he held
a twenty-pound stone over their heads ready to drop upon them
in case they should think of looking on the ledge above.

When the crowd were gone Ralph knew that one road was
open to him. He could follow down the creek to Clifty, and
thence he might escape. But, traveling down to Clifty, he debated
whether it was best to escape. To flee was to confess
his guilt, to make himself an outlaw, to put an insurmountable
barrier between himself and Hannah, whose terror-stricken
and anxious face as she stood by the brook-willows haunted
him now, and was an involuntary witness to her love.

Long before he reached Clifty his mind was made up not

to flee another mile. He knocked at the door of Squire Underwood.
But Squire Underwood was also a doctor, and had
been called away. He knocked at the door of Squire Doolittle.
But Squire Doolittle had gone to Lewisburg. He was
about to give up all hope of being able to surrender himself
to the law when he met Squire Hawkins, who had come over
to Clifty to avoid responsibility for the ill-deeds of his neighbors
which he was powerless to prevent.

“Is that you, Mr. Hartsook?”

“Yes, and I want you to arrest me and try me here in
Clifty.”