unfolded, on the overflowing,
misshapen bundle of clothes that lay in the bag; then he jumped on the
lid with both feet and kicked the hasp into the lock; a very elegantly
laundered cuff and white sleeve dangling out from between the fastened
lids. "I haven't one second to talk, Tom; I have seventeen minutes to
catch the express, and it's a mile and a half to the station; the train
leaves here at eight fifty, I get to Plattville at ten forty-seven.
Telephone for a cab for me, please, or tell me the number; I don't want
to stop to hunt it up."

Meredith looked him in the eyes. In the pupils of Harkless flared a
fierce light. His cheeks were reddened with an angry, healthy glow, and
his teeth were clenched till the line of his jaw stood out like that
of an embattled athlete in sculpture; his brow was dark; his chest was
thrown out, and he took deep, quick breaths; his shoulders were squared,
and in spite of his thinness they looked massy. Lethargy, or malaria, or
both, whatever were his ailments, they were gone. He was six feet of hot
wrath and cold resolution.

Tom said: "You are going?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am going."

"Then I will go with you."

"Thank you, Tom," said the other quietly.

Meredith ran into his own room, pressed an electric button, sprang out
of his pyjamas like Aphrodite from the white sea-foam, and began to dive
into his clothes with a panting rapidity astonishingly foreign to his
desire. Jim appeared in the doorway.

"The cart, Jim," shouted his master. "We want it like lightning. Tell
the cook to give Mr. Harkless his breakfast in a hurry. Set a cup of
coffee on the table by the front door for me. Run like the deuce! We've
got to catch a train.--That will be quicker than any cab," he explained
to Harkless. "We'll break the ordinance against fast driving, getting
down there."

Ten minutes later the cart swept away from the house at a gait which
pained the respectable neighborhood. The big horse plunged through the
air, his ears laid flat toward his tail; the cart careened sickeningly;
the face of the servant clutching at the rail in the rear was smeared
with pallor as they pirouetted around curves on one wheel--to him it
seemed they skirted the corners and Death simultaneously--and the speed
of their going made a strong wind in their faces.

Harkless leaned forward.

"Can you make it a little faster, Tom?" he said.

They dashed up to the station amid the cries of people flying to the