instantly by the acrid, burning taste, he spat the crushed
berries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his best
judgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic of
him, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of the
distinguishing marks of the timber.

Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted some
little time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacs
and weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it was
still. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been a
shack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare head
below the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty and
gained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had once
formed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncovered
something. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, red
fish with the crusted rust of years.

Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old,
broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crusted
harrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it would
go, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward with
all his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. The
link had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressure
had almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowing
that it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he had
known all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wrists
and thinking.

He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion that
fire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bits
of the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slender
and straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding
his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to
catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable
too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only
in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his
wrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it.

Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls he
noticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held to
half-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part o