But the sound was distinctly coming on. Billy opened one eye, then the
other, and hastily scanned the sky in either direction for an
aeroplane, but the sky was as clear as crystal without a speck, and the
sound was distinctly drawing nearer.

A voice from the roadside hurtled sharply across:

"Hist! There! He's coming! Lay still! Remember you get five more bucks
if you pull this off!"

A cold chill crept down Billy's back on tiny needle-pointed fringe of
feet like a centipede. There was a sudden constriction in his throat
and a leaden weight on each eye. He could not have opened them if he
had tried, for a great white light stabbed across them and seemed to be
holding them down for inspection. The thing he had wanted to have
happen had come, and he was frightened; frightened cold clear to the
soul of him--not at the thing that was about to come, but at the fact
that he had broken faith with himself after all; broken faith with the
haloed girl at the organ in the golden light; broken faith--for thirty
pieces of silver! In that awful moment he was keenly conscious of the
fact that when he got the other five there would be just thirty dollars
for the whole! Thirty pieces of silver and the judgment day already
coming on!




IV