The Man in Lower Ten

there, white-lipped, unsmiling, staring down the dusty road. One hand was clenched tight over some small object. Her eyes dropped to it from the distant road, and then closed, with a quick, indrawn

hings later that might have helped me, and did not. At the time, I was only completely bewildered. Save the wreck, the responsibility for which lay between Providence and the engineer of the

than I had realized, for when we had gone a little way along the road she turned to me almost petulantly. "Please don

ntably relieved. "Do you know, a few minu

it every second. She seemed to come to a decision about it while we were still in sight of the gate, for she murmured something and turned back alone, going swiftly, her feet stirring up small puffs of dust at every step. She fastened som

an trolley line. Once a man with an empty wagon offered us a

they are castanets as it is,

n the trolley line was in sight, she got a pebble in her low shoe, a

"Moral support and-and all that. Do you know, my first conscious

ded the road, and I surprised a look of misery on her fa

at I-that I hadn't been obliterated, blown out like a c

society are forgotten at times like this, I leaned over and p

gs," I expostulated. "Perhap

ine, not quickly, but decisively. A car was in sight, coming toward us. The steel finger of civilization,

sed the wreck, emphasizing its horrors. The girl did not seem to hear. Once sh

n the accident," she said. "Will you ple

she asked to examine the gun-metal cigarette case, and sat silent with it

n, belongs to a fellow named Sullivan. He probably left t

ted the-the crime?" Her eye

clothes, unless he is trying to get away from something. Besides the dirk, there were the stains that y

around the corners of her mouth. "That is," I fin

t. Afterwards I wished I had let it lie unnoticed on the floor of that dirty little suburban car, and even now, when I see a woman carelessly dangling a similar feminine trinket,

on should not stray back to the wreck, and

y?" she asked suddenly, "and

se up and go to church, those who rise up and read the newspapers, and those who don't rise up. T

almost pettishly. "Don't try so hard t

o to friends in the city was a shock: it meant an earlier separation than I had planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In p

think I would better not try, anyhow. I cannot tell you how grateful I am." I muttered something about th

Blakeley. And-if you ever hear anything about me-that is not-

t playing all around. "I-I'm afraid that I shall think too we