The thing he could not see was what lay in the corner, the huddled-up,
blood-stained hulk of a something for which a smiling, fat woman and
six tow-headed youngsters were waiting across the common. Chick
crawled to the head of the stairs, and as he reached the top step his
hand touched a hard object. He picked it up and held it to the light,
and as he did so, the joy that often blossoms on the brink of tragedy
was his for a moment. It was the riding whip whose handle he had
fallen heir to that afternoon!

Down the steps, through the door and out into the rain-soaked night he
sped; across the common, through the switch-yard, and down the narrow,
noisome darkness of Bean Alley. Over a ram-shackled fence, and up a
dilapidated porch he clambered like a cat, until he reached the small
loft in the Flathers' two-roomed mansion which he called home.

Here the hardened criminal, the breaker of laws, and of slot machines,
the would-be burglar, threw himself upon an old mattress, and with two
grimy fists in his eyes sobbed out his heart to the rafters above.

It was not repentance for his sins, neither was it terror of the
secret that was locked behind his inarticulate lips, although both of
them had a part. It was because a beautiful young lady had taken his
part, and put her arms about him, and refused to believe that he was
as bad as Skeeter Sheeley said he was.




CHAPTER V