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him from the swoon of his bewildering experience. He got up and said in a whisper, mainly to himself, "My God, they've already gone!"

He started for the door. This time the girl neither moved nor spoke but remained just as she lay with closed eyes looking as if someone had felled her at a blow.

A backward glance at her aroused in Abner a kind of questioning remorse. He had a feeling of coming out of some sort of whirling force that had betrayed and wrecked Nessie, and now it had passed and left in the room a kind of draggled evil. He felt an impulse to get away from this evil thing. He opened the door as silently as he could and left Nessie in the room.

More distant shots took Abner’s mind from such dismal impressions and sent him tiptoeing down the hall, then down the stairs two at a time and so out in the street where he broke into a run for the lock-up.

The village street was still empty, and Abner’s flying feet aroused echoes as if some invisible runner raced the teamster just behind the string of houses. As he approached the alley which led from the business street to the lock-up, the youth craned forward, trying to peer down it long before he reached the vantage of its mouth. When he did dash into it all he saw was the lock-up door standing open and Constable Gifford walking away from it with one of his shirt sleeves torn.

The teamster rushed down on the officer.

"Where'd they go, Mr. Gifford? Which way?" He drew down to a panting walk.

"Yander way!" the constable flung an arm toward the west. "My Lord, they all jumped on me at wunst—what could a feller do! Look here, how they tore my shirt! They'd uh killed me if I hadn't of give 'em the key!" He held up his arm to display more prominently the torn sleeve.

Abner had no time to waste on the alibi the constable was preparing, but struck out again, westward, toward the old Squire Meredith place at a long trot.