r own teeth chattered the first time
you went in for a thing like this. I'm all right. You'll squeal before
I do."

"That's more like. Here's the gate. It's locked. Come, Nance."

With a good, strong swing he boosted me over, handed me the bag of
tools and sprang over himself.... He looked kind o' handsome and fine,
my Tom, as he lit square and light on his feet beside me. And because
he did, I put my arm in his and gave it a squeeze.

Oh, Mag, it was so funny, going through Latimer's garden! There was
the garden table where I had sat reading and thinking he took me for
Miss Omar. There was the bench where that beast Moriway sat sneering
at me. The wheeled chair was gone. And it was so late everything
looked asleep. But something was left behind that made me think I
heard Latimer's slow, silken voice, and made me feel cheap--turned
inside out like an empty pocket--a dirty, ragged pocket with a seam in
it.

"You'll stay here, Nancy, and watch," Tom whispered. "You'll whistle
once if a cop comes inside the gate, but not before he's inside the
gate. Don't whistle too soon--mind that--nor too loud. I'll hear ye
all right. And I'll whistle just once if--anything happens. Then you
run--hear me? Run like the devil--"

"Tommy--"

"Well, what?"

"Nothing--all right." I wanted to say good-by--but you know Tom.

Mag, were you ever where you oughtn't to be at midnight--alone? No, I
know you weren't. 'Twas your ugly little face and your hair that saved
you--the red hair we used to guy so at the Cruelty. I can see you
now--a freckle-faced, thin little devil, with the tangled hair to the
very edge of your ragged skirt, yanked in that first day to the Cruelty
when the neighbors complained your crying wouldn't let 'em sleep
nights. The old woman had just locked you in there, hadn't she, to
starve when she lit out. Mothers are queer, ain't they, when they are
queer. I never remember mine.

Yes, I'll go on.

I stood it all right for a time, out there alone in the night. But I
never was one to wait patiently. I can't wait--it isn't in me. But
there I had to stand and just--God!--just wait.

If I hadn't waited so hard at the very first I wouldn't 'a' given out
so soon. But I stood so still and listened so terribly hard that the
trees began to whisper and the bushes to crack and creep. I heard
things in my head and ears that weren't sounding anywhere else. And
all of a sudden--tramp, tramp, tramp--I he