"Been down to the game at M'nop'ly," he explained happily as he flung
breezily into the kitchen and dashed his cap on a chair, "Gee! That ham
smells good! Say, Saxy, whad-ya do with that can of black paint I left
on the door step last Saturday?"
"It's in a wooden box in the corner of the shed, Willie," answered his
Aunt, "Come to supper now. It'll all get cold. I've been waiting most
an hour."
"Oh, hang it! I don't s'pose you know where the brush is--Yes, I'm
coming. Oh, here 'tis!"
He ate ravenously and briefly. His aunt watched him with a kind of
breathless terror waiting for the inevitable remark at the close:
"Well, I gotta beat it! I gotta date with the fellas!"
She had ceased to argue. She merely looked distressed. It seemed a part
of his masculinity that was inevitable.
At the door he was visited with an unusual thoughtfulness. He stuck his
head back in the room to say: "Oh, yes, Saxy, I might not be home till morning. I might
stay all night some place."
He was going without further explanation, but her dismay as she
murmured pathetically: "But to-morrow is the Sabbath, Willie--!" halted him once more.
"Oh, I'll be home time fer Sunday-school," he promised gaily, and was
off down the road in the darkness, his old wheel squeaking
rheumatically with each revolution growing fainter and fainter in the
night.
But Billy did not take the road to the Junction in his rapid flight.
Instead he climbed the left hand mountain road that met the Forks and
led to the great Highway. Slower and slower the old wheel went, Billy
puffing and bending low, till finally he had to dismount and put a drop
of oil in a well known spot which his finger found in the dark, from
the little can he carried in his pocket for such a time of need. He did
not care to proclaim his coming as he crept up the rough steep way. And
once when a tin Lizzie swept down upon him, he ducked and dropped into
the fringe of alders at the wayside until it was past. Was that, could
it have been Cart? It didn't look like Cart's car, but it was very
dark, and the man had not dimmed his lights. It was blinding. He hoped
it was Cart, and that he had gone to the parsonage. Somehow he liked to
think of those two together. It made his own view of life seem
stronger. So he slunk quietly up to the fork where the Highway swept
down round a curve, and turned to go down across the ridge. Here was
the spot where the rich guy would presently come. He looked the ground
over, with his bike safely hidden below road level. With a sturdy set
of satisfaction to his shoulders, and a twinkle of fun in his eye, he
began to burrow into the undergrowth and find branches, a fallen log,
stones, anything, and drag them up across the great state highway till
he had a complete barricade.