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Author of "When We Killed Thompson"
WE NEVER did get to Grimes' schoolhouse that night.
Personally, I have had the most delicious and satisfying thrills of wickedness every time I have thought of that evening and its attendant events. The thrills have not been scarce, for I have thought of it often.
I believe sincerely that none of us felt wicked or conscience stricken at the time. Hunkydory, at least, knew that we were shielding an escaped prisoner with a murderous reputation. I have never been quite so sure what Dicky Birch thought or knew about it.
I remember it chiefly as a time when, for about four gloriously horrible hours, I felt as if my entire alimentary canal were frozen stiff and never would thaw out. Fear always inserts a drawstring or a dose of frappé alum-water at the pit of my stomach.
There was to be (and probably was, though, as I say, we didn't get to it) a "spelling" at Grimes' schoolhouse that night. Grimes' was the next district to ours, about two miles away. Pap had grudgingly consented that I might go to it, with Dicky Birch, who lived just beyond the edge of our big bottom meadow, beside the Dug Road. I had hurried through with the milking, wood-carrying and other chores, had swallowed a big supper in a manner that would have scandalized Horace Fletcher, blacked my boots, and had gone down to the meadow gate by our schoolhouse, where Dicky was to meet me. He answered my whistle immediately, there in the dusk by the wild plum tree, and we started. We were in great feather, leaping high, as fourteen-year-olds will when released for a few sweet, short hours from iron-handed paternal surveillance.
We followed the path, single file, our boots clumping noisily down the hill and our eager chatter waking the echoes as we went. Along the line-fence between our meadow and the weed-patch that might have been the shiftless Allards' meadow we marched. Dicky, who was ahead, suddenly let out a fine beginning for a loud yell, which sank and perished in his throat like a death-rattle.
I was beside him by then, for I could not have kept back. I am the kind of coward that wins undying fame in battles, for fear paralyzes my reverse and turning gear and makes me go forward. Dicky and I were facing a ghastly, black-stubbled countenance with blue lips, and a convulsively-working Adam's apple in a scraggy, unkempt and collarless throat. But the thing that definitely
