motion with her hand.

Sam jumped off the cracker barrel and strolled toward the street door. A
flush was on his cheeks. His mouth felt hot and dry. He went with extreme
deliberateness, stopping to bow to the banker, and for a moment lingering
to read a newspaper that lay upon the cigar case, to avoid the comments he
feared his going might excite among the men by the stove. In his heart he
trembled lest the girl should have disappeared down the street, and with
his eyes, he looked guiltily at the banker, who had joined the group at
the back of the store and who now stood listening to the talk, while he
read from a list held in his hand and Wildman went here and there doing up
packages and repeating aloud the names of articles called off by the
banker.

At the end of the lighted business section of Main Street, Sam found the
girl waiting for him. She began to tell of the subterfuge by which she had
escaped her father.

"I told him I would go home with my sister," she said, tossing her head.

Taking hold of the boy's hand, she led him along the shaded street. For
the first time Sam walked in the company of one of the strange beings that
had begun to bring him uneasy nights, and overcome with the wonder of it
the blood climbed through his body and made his head reel so that he
walked in silence unable to understand his own emotions. He felt the soft
hand of the girl with delight; his heart pounded against the walls of his
chest and a choking sensation gripped at his throat.

Walking along the street, past lighted residences where the low voices of
women in talk greeted his ears, Sam was inordinately proud. He thought