he might have had it all. He gazed cautiously, but
with no determined plan of action, out over the
street -- it lay deserted in the ambient sunlight.

He quickly left the house, the old man sprawling
grotesquely across the bare hall, forcing himself to
walk with an assumed, deliberate ease over the plank
walk, past Simmons' corner. As he progressed a
plan formulated in his mind, a plan obvious, promising
immediate, practicable results... Lettice
had told him that she would remain for two weeks
at the farm. It was evident that she was still there.
His gait quickened; if he could reach her now, before
any one else... He wished that he had
closed the door upon the old man's body; any one
passing as he had passed could see the corpse; a
wagon would be sent for the girl.

He commenced, outside the village, to run, pounding
over the dusty way with long-drawn, painful
gasps, his chest oppressed by the now unaccustomed
exercise, the rapid motion. When he came in sight
of the farmhouse that was his objective, he stopped
and endeavored to remove all traces of his haste; he
rubbed off his shoes, fingered his necktie, mopped his
brow.

There was a woman on the porch; it proved to be
Mrs. Caley, folded in a shawl, pale and gaunt.
Suddenly the possibility occurred to him that Lettice
had driven into church. But she was in the

[[140]]

p139 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p140w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p141

v?