but at night he found that it had bided its time. It was growing stronger. By dawn it was pain, positive and prolonged.

He went, in the first light, to see Farrar, the doctor, who told him that he was sound in wind and limb, quite physically all right. Owen seemed relieved, but in a moment again talked of pain. But he was not able to tell where it was, and Farrar could not lay hand on the source.

From the doctor's he went to the office. It was natural to go to bed when you were in pain, constant pain, but he developed a repugnance to that. He wished to be upon his feet and moving, and also to be in company. He had no fever, he could n't say that he felt weak, he could walk all right, he could even work. There was simply pain. "It 'll wear away; something obscure." He accepted the doctor's perhaps over cheerful word and determined to forget it.

You are not to think that all this time there was not discussion enough, suppressed and open, about what had happened out by Dargan's. There was. The law made a considerable show of action; the law could act when it wished to. There is no doubt at all that it would have hanged Jim Lizard, but every one knew that in this other quarter nothing startling would happen. So many were implicated, or would be if it came to accusations and prosecutions, that such a thing could not be looked for. The company ruled Cottonville and Pleasantly and even Lane. As for the farmer and country folk generally, Dargan was one of them, and some Laurie or other had always led.

Owen Adams went to the office, but could not rest there. For a moment

he might forget, or it might seem that he had fought it forth, clapped door, and drawn bolt. But through some crack or crevice it came back-pain. In the middle of this night, after an instant in which he thought it had gone for good, it suddenly came battering in with a reinforcement. He was now in something like agony. In the morning he went again to the doctor.

This time he wanted morphia. Farrar could n't conscientiously give it to him. It looked like a fixed idea. The physician told him so; and that probably the remedy was mental or moral or, so to speak, spiritual, and must be applied by an act of will. But Adams insisted that he was in constant and intense bodily pain. Farrar put him through a thorough examination and found nothing. He tried suggestion, hypnotization in fact, but it would n't work. Something immediate and strong was already in possession. At last the doctor did give him a little morphia. He seemed relieved and went away smiling,-he was a big, handsome fellow,-but in the afternoon he came again and wanted more. He said that the first had not lasted any time. Farrar refused, telling him that he was sure the whole thing was a notion; to be a man and overcome it. Adams said that he was in the greatest pain, and begged, and when the physician still refused, he flamed into an ugly kind of anger, and said that he would find a doctor who knew extremity when he saw it.

Later, Farrar understood that he went from him to the drug-store and got some kind of dope. Whatever it was, it did him no good; but after that first day or two he ceased to try any

He seemed to

thing of the kind. know that it was useless.

Here in the drug-store, for the first time after the night by Dargan's, he spoke to Jim Nicholls.

"I'm in pain, Jim!"

"Are you? Well, I 'm not." Jim sold him the stuff, and he went away. Pain, and the stuff like water. No, not like water. Water was all right; like like oil.

The strange thing, if he thought of it at all, was that he could keep his head. He had never been regular at office, but he went in and out much as he had always done, and listened to his uncle's dry expositions, or dictated a letter to young Wilson. His uncle looked at him askance and was dry and peremptory, but that was because he was virtually certain that the nephew had run with Harrison Laurie the other night, and he abhorred what had happened. But he did not mean ever to bring it out into language. Owen had a pleasant boarding-place in Pleasantly, and he came to table and talked when it was necessary. One of his fellow-boarders, a woman, said to him, "How well you 're looking!" But that very night it strengthened again and became hideous hideous pain.

In the morning he determined to ride out to Laurie's. Maybe exercise, maybe getting away from town, maybe Laurie, with his drawling voice So he went.

On Firefly he passed the X. & Y. station, and Tom Wherry, in the ticket-office, saw him through a window. Tom Wherry had the greatest stab of envy.

"He 's free! He rides away! He can go as far as he pleases-as far as Europe if he wants to! I wish you

were me, tied here, chained here! If I had your horse!"

§ 5

A young man, twenty-eight perhaps, rather short than tall, rather stout than lean, having a golden voice and a gift of the gab-that was Tom Wherry. People liked him well enough, and in various societies he was often pushed forward to make a little speech. And he liked in his turn Cottonville and Pleasantly and Magnolia County and his job. If ever he said, "Some day I'll go further and wider," still "someday," like heaven, remained distant and airy. He found, where he was, a theater and a good part, if a minor one, and an appreciative audience, if not one at the top of the cultural tree. If he had been used, with all his saying, to say such things, he might have remarked that the tree was bushier, bigger, fuller of sound and movement where he was. He was pretty content.

For recreation in snatches he kept within his desk a detective story, and he knew everybody who paused at his window, and his imagination never anticipated or followed the trains that roared in and roared out.

Something in him too fluent, too much of the theater, good, bad, or indifferent, made him for the crowd wherever it did congregate, and his trick of language, together with that really precious organ his voice, did the rest. As he would have said, he was talking before he knew it. And usually he advocated that in which the crowd was interested. To reprehend would have been too violent a start from home. Again, he might have answered: "But I don't reprehend. Is n't it all right?" So the crowd got under him and pushed him up, but he was

The morning after the happening among the girdled trees by Dargan's house Tom Wherry sold tickets, made entries, and answered questions behind his grating in his very narrow quarters. It was natural enough, with lost sleep, and the excitement subsiding, to feel a kind of distaste. "My life! I'd like to go fishing or to a circus or something out of this hole!" He sold tickets, made entries, answered questions. Station tongue, station ear had to do with the jailbreaking and the lynching. When the ten o'clock train came in, people jumped down and talked about it. Of the buyers of tickets and askers of questions some looked at him curiously and others winked. "You look as though you had n't slept. But of course you went down to jail just to see what the mob looked like." "Mum, is n't it?" "I hope you had pleasant dreams last night, Tom Wherry."

"Sure I did," said Tom. "Old rising bell rang too soon for me! Lane? Train's fifty minutes late, but making up."

When after a time waiting-room and platform and tracks settled into the doldrums, he reached for his book. It opened easily; it was what he called an interesting one, keeping a man guessing. Now, with a clapping suddenness, arose between him and the page a desire to quit. Ticket office, waiting-room, platform, station, Pleasantly and Cottonville and Magnolia County became hateful places. Get away from them quick!

He pushed back from desk with a gasp as of one who has been down in deep water and up for the first time.

ing been there, he could not tell the composition of the crowd; but to his mind what they had done was n't so God Almighty far from good! No, sir! Got to stamp it out, sir, got to give the whole kit-and-biling of them warning and example! What do they think of it in Washington? Which Washington? I don't care which. Of course he was guilty! Thought it, if he did n't do it, and I 'm morally certain he did it. No, I don't know who was in the crowd; don't even care to know. I take it impersonally, so to speak. That's the way Pleasantly and Cottonville and Magnolia County should take it-impersonally."

He liked the word. Open air and the discussion in which he felt that he had come off well had restored him to himself. He walked down the platform. It was a gorgeous, hot summer day, but here hung shadow. Right nice place, after all!

As though the sun had barbed and sent an arrow against it, his environment shriveled and withered and became horrible. He gasped. "This town's a jail! Get away! I've got to make a get-away! It's a vacation Tom Wherry 's needing!"

The hot sun crossed the meridian, slowly went down the west, dipped beneath, and vanished. "Make a get-away! make a get-away!" Tom Wherry sat in his room, which was not a palatial one, and his table was spread with railway folders. They showed pictures-mountains and lakes, cities, scenery, rivers, even ocean and ships

waiting for trains smoothly running to the dock. North, east, south, west, and the quarters between. Everywhere save straight up and down.

His holiday was not due, but perhaps if he went and told those over him how imperative it was, he might get away. If they said no, and the going cost him his job- He drank ice-water, and looked out of his looked out of his screened window at the moon. It was late.

He slept upon it, and in the morning laughed at the folders scattered all over his small room. When his holiday came in September he was going with Rangeley, the telegraph operator, to Rangeley's father's farm, up in the hills. There was a town near by, and a lot of pretty girls in that county. He had been hectic last night. That was it, hectic.

He hummed as he dressed. Everydayness lasted through going downstairs and across the street to Tony's Restaurant.

But with the coffee-cup half-way to his lips it returned. He set the cup down. Get away! get away quick! This place was dangerous, hateful, and horrible. The ten o'clock express.

He went to the Cottonville bank and drew out his money, two hundred and fifty dollars. Then at the ticket office he sold himself a ticket, and began to write a letter of explanation to be left upon his desk. But in a moment this seemed unnecessary, and he tore it up. He looked at the clock. Half an hour. He sold tickets, answered questions, looked at the clock. Quarter of an hour, ten minutes. Closing the ticket window, he made a step toward his hat and a bag, which he had brought with him from the boarding-house. There came a feeling,

quite definite and horrible, of fixture. "I can't! I can't! Everything will get in the way; see if it does n't! I'm fastened!"

"I

He let the express go by without him. All day both feelings increased, the inward, consuming, terrible hurry and desire, and a miserable conviction of helplessness. In the afternoon he set foot upon the step of the day coach of Number 5. Behind him one called "Wherry!" It was Rangeley. He drew back to the platform. thought I saw a man in there that I knew." He had no movement toward confiding in Rangeley or in any. "They 'd tell." Escape by himself! Escape from what? He did not know. Men spent their lives, did n't they, trying to escape from death? It was like that; only it was all quickened and run together in him right here and now. Make a get-away! Break the chain! The horror was that he knew that all kinds of things would set foot in path to trip him, running. The next day he tried again, tried thrice. Each time something happened. The express was gone before he was out of the door upon the platform. Some one came into the ticket office and deliberately buttonholed him, and the east bound went by. A crowd got between him and Number 5, and he could not face it. That evening after hours he started to walk to Burbridge and thence to Lane, where he might take the night train. He went a mile or two upon the dusty road, and again encountered frustration. A man driving an ox team pulled up beside him and spoke. "It's a hot evening, and you must be ready to turn. Want to go back to Pleasantly with me?"

He did not want to, but he went,

sitting beside the driver. The man left him at the dusky edge of Pleasantly, going on with the oxen toward Jessamine.

Make a get-away! Plunge toward it and always be brought up short! He had tried, and it was of no use. He knew it now inside. He would try and try, try because he could n't help trying, and yet he would n't be able to do it. The ox man was gone. Folk in Pleasantly were able to go. They escaped! Mr. Linley had gone that day on the private car of the X. & Y., going North somewhere. He saw him at ease, in one of the car's big leather chairs, Magnolia County growing less and less, fading out. Envy devoured him. "O God! I wish I were him and he was me!"

Under the big live-oak at church corner he met the secretary of the Y. M. C. A.

"Evening." "Evening."

"I'm going to-morrow with three or four of the fellows to Sea View for a week. A dip in the big water will feel good these dog days. Wish you could go along, Tom."

"You don't wish it any more than me."

When the other had passed on, it was devouring envy that he felt. "If I could take his trip, I 'd steal it all right! I'd knock him down for it. But it is n't in a week that I'd be coming back here! O God, why should he be out of it and not me? Everybody but me!"

"Ocean. Sail across the ocean. Swim across

and frightful envy. By the fourth day he might not know if it was Cottonville and Pleasantly from which he ached to go, or if it was Tom Wherry, or what it was. A throbbing aversion, and an envy like poison oak, and it did no good to take trains or to plan to take them. He began to cease from the attempt. Misery had come to live with him a misery like homesickness a million times deepened, and all aforetime likable folk now were taunters and flaunters of a property theirs, not his.

From the station window he saw Owen Adams on Firefly riding out from Pleasantly. He seemed to Tom a happy king. "He can get away. He's free. Nothing holds him." The condition of any one not Tom Wherry appeared a condition of bliss. Envy ate him. He was shaken and blasted by those inner great starts to get free. Inner now, not outer. Pictures continually rose of Tom Wherry elsewhere and at ease and happy again. Now he sat upon the deck of a boat, something cool with ice in the glass beside him. The shore receded; it was all right. Now he quite happily hoed corn on a hillside, with the deep woods. in view, and the crows cawing, and no other neighbors. Now but the pictures were endless.

It all increased; only the pictures ceased to appear. There was nothing but a dreadful feeling occupying him and devouring him. At night he shed scalding tears.

Farrar's sister was going to Lane to do some shopping. Farrar went with her to the station, took her ticket, and

There grew within him a forlornness, changing now and again into a vivid

said to him as he was paying for the ticket, "You all seem to me quite enviable." Farrar repeated it to his