Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“ Ce nile | \ aoe 282 THE ARGOSY. “Will that poor boy live?” Jane de- clamor of machinery, it seemed but a part manded anxiously. of the general hubbub. “You come along back and wash up and He was standing in a tiny front yard off ‘tend store!” Jud urged. “I never see the the side street where already a few strag- beat of it in my life! Walked right into gling plants were budding, lost in a dis- livin’ death, you did!” paraging contemplation of the little shack “Well, the chief did, too, didn’t he?” to which Hoyt had directed him, when a Without premeditation the words leaped man running heavily past yelled at him: from Jane’s lips, and she did not note the “Hey, old-timer! Northern Star’s got change which her simple query brought to it again! Company store’s blown up!” the faces about her, as man after man For one awful moment Peddar’s senses glanced shamedly at his neighbor and reeled, and the little shack blurred and turmed away. ‘“ What have they done with wavered before his eyes. The next instant the boy who was hurt?” he had turned and was scuttling as fast as “The doc will fix him up.” Jud’s good- his trembling old legs would carry him natured face was still stern, but a look of back to the main street. He saw the crowd confused deference was creeping over it. at the water-front, and the store building ‘“T shouldn’t have spoke so—so fresh to seemed still to be standing, but where was you just now, but you scairt me! Come _ his beloved mistress? in the store and I’ll get you a bucket of As he swerved past the lodging-house water before your father sees you, miss. door, Ma Heaney bounced down the steps You got yourself mussed up some.” and seized him in an ample grasp. Jane followed him down the lane which ‘““She’s all right, Mr. Peddar! She’s the dividing crowd made for her, still in here!” dazed from the shock of the affair, and Peddar almost sobbed in his relief as his once in the store she leaned against the informant half dragged him up the steps counter in the sudden limpness of reaction. and into the office, where Jane, very pale, It did not occur to her numbed brain what but quite composed, was talking to the swift impulse had actuated her until a low general superintendent. voice at her side penetrated her conscious- ‘““Qh, miss—Jane, I mean—you're safe? ness. You’re not hurt?” he gasped. “Miss Peddar, I want to take back what ‘Of course not, father! I wasn’t even I said to you a little while ago, about your near when the accident occurred,” Jane ex- reminding me of some one back East whom plained hurriedly to cover that almost in- I had seen.”’ It was Barney Hoyt, and he evitable slip. “‘ No one was hurt except stood before her with a new look in his one poor boy, and Mr. Bowers says that it eyes. ‘She could never have done what isn’t serious and he will soon be well. It you did just now.” was just one of the little shacks back of.the Jane smiled faintly, and for the first store that went up in smoke. Was it an time glanced down at her reddened hands. accident, Mr. Bowers? I mean was that “ You were right, though, when you said young workman careless?” that everything was different up here,” she Jim Bowers’s face darkened and his great said. “ How do you know what she would hands clenched. have done in my place?” “It might have been his fault if he had been anywhere else but there!” he mut- tered. Then his anger flamed out un- CHAPTER XI. guardedly: ‘ That dynamite stick was at- pee Sxiaiviny faa SR tached to a wire that trailed off east over the lots. I traced it myself just now for "THE roar of the explosion reached Ped- about fifty feet, and it led to a battery dar at the farther end of the town, somewhere like a fire-blast. I lost the wire but to his unaccustomed ears, deafened by where it ran into the ground, but it is bound _ days and nights of continuous noise and . to have been cut, anyway, by now, and the Comicbooks:com —