ashboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the last
of its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. He
stared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliff
edge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went.
Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, then
hard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he was
soon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched along
without sense of direction or, indeed, without any active realization of
what he was doing.

* * * * *

Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour.
A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the
house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for
losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the
figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up,
painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He
moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of
the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that
through the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen.

The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were looming
dead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a small
terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward,
kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out with
short, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such motions as the
terrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backing
away, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh,
Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of the
breaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing and
cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt the
terrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, to
where it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and a
half-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled,
half fell out of sight behind the woodpile.

Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, with
the whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners with
the muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming had
aroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the east
Mr. Tri