To the left lay the road that curved up to the forks where one went
across to the Highway and at right angles the Highway went straight
across the ridge in front of him and sloped down to the spot where the
fat one expected him to play his part at eight o'clock to-night. The
Highway was the way down which the "rich guy" was expected to come
speeding in a high power car from New York, and had to be stopped and
relieved of money that "did not belong to him."
Billy thought it all over. Somehow things seemed different now. He had
by some queer psychological process of his own, brought Lynn Severn's
mind and Mark Carter's mind together to bear upon the matter and gained
a new perspective. He was pretty well satisfied in his own soul that
the thing he had set out to do was not "on the level." It began to be
pretty plain to him that that "rich guy" might be in the way of getting
hurt or perhaps still worse, and he had no wish to be tangled up in a
mess like that. At the same time he did not often get a chance to make
twenty-five dollars, and he had no mind to give it up. It was not in
his unyellow soul to go back on his word without refunding the money,
and a dollar of it was already spent to the "Chinese Fund," to say
nothing of sundaes and sodas and whips. So he sat and studied the
mountain ahead of him.
Suddenly, as the sun, which had been for a long time slipping down
behind the mountains at his back, finally disappeared, his face
cleared. He had found a solution.
He sprang up from the cold stone, where his fingers had been
mechanically feeling out the familiar letters of the inscription:
"Blessed are the dead--" and catching up the prone wheel, strode upon
it and dashed down the darkening street toward the little cottage near
the willows belonging to his Aunt Saxon. He was whistling as he went,
for he was happy. He had found a way to keep his cake and eat it too.
It would not have been Billy if he had not found a way out.
Aunt Saxon turned a drawn and anxious face away from the window at his
approach and drew a sigh of momentary relief. This bringing up boys was
a terrible ordeal. But thanks be this immediate terror was past and her
sister's orphaned child still lived! She hurried to the stove where the
waiting supper gave forth a pleasant odor.