e a request for permission to
use the 'phone when he happened to glance through the window looking
toward the street. An arc light had sprung into being, and--he stopped
with a gasp. Down the street was coming a crowd that was evidently in
some haste and he recognized its leader. It was a large, bony woman, who
strode like a man, and Jimmy thought that she carried something in her
hand, something that he surmised might be a selected missile.

"Good Lord!" he breathed. "If she hit me a clip with a little chunk
before, what'll she do with a full-grown brick? Why, it'd be murder I
I've got to get away from here if I have to steal the horse and kidnap
that boy!"

Being quick in decision and swift in enterprise, and adaptable to sudden
emergency, he ran back out with great presence of mind and shouted to
the boy, "Come on, son! Get a move on you. Mr. Wade says it's all right
and for you to take me as fast as you can. Let's be off before that
crowd gets here looking for the train."

The boy barely caught the tail of the sleigh and thus proved that he
might have boarded the train; for Jimmy, not waiting for him, had
clutched the lines and stirred the restless nag to action by a
surreptitious slap with his hand.

"The shortest road is back the way we come," insisted the boy, as Jimmy
drove the horse recklessly across the end of the platform and into a
road that appeared fortuitously in front of him.

"But I certainly do like this way best," insisted Jimmy, urging the
horse to speed. "I've always been fond of this road."

"Well it's a mile outen the way," protested the boy.

"What's a mile to us, eh? You see it's such a nice clean road and it's
been so well traveled that it's better than--what? Turn to the left you
say? I always thought we went straight ahead here."

"Straight ahead would take us to the slaughter house," objected his
guide.

"Oh! I thought the slaughter house was somewhere around the depot," said
Jimmy with a grin at his own joke, which was entirely unappreciated by
the boy.

The station, with its menace, had by now been left behind in the whirl
of snow, and the heavy dusk of twilight. Jimmy was breathing again, and
cheerful, having escaped the most imminent peril. The horse was loping
steadily up the street as if imbued with the hope of a warm stall in a
warm stable.

"Turn to the right! The right! That's the way," insisted the boy, and
Jimmy, after a single backward glance to convince him that th