ard the cop's footsteps.

He stopped over there by the swinging electric light above the gate. I
crouched down behind the iron bench.

And my coat caught a twig on a bush and its crack--ck was like a yell.

I thought I'd die. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd run. I thought
I'd faint. But I didn't--for there, asleep on a rug that some one had
forgotten to take in, was the house cat. I gave her a quick slap, and
she flew out and across the path like a flash.

The cop watched her, his hand on the gate, and passed on.

Mag Monahan, if Tom had come out that minute without a bean and gone
home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried again. But he
didn't come. Nothing happened. Nights and nights and nights went by,
and the stillness began to sound again. My throat went choking mad. I
began to shiver, and I reached for the rug the cat had lain on.

Funny, how some things strike you! This was Latimer's rug. I had
noticed it that evening--a warm, soft, mottled green that looked like
silk and fur mixed. I could see the way his long, white hands looked
on it, and as I touched it I could hear his voice--

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!

Ever hear a man like that say a thing like that? No? Well, it's--it's
different. It's as if the river had spoken--or a tree--it's so--it's
so different.

That saved me--that verse that I remembered. I said it over and over
and over again to myself. I fitted it to the ferry whistles on the
bay--to the cop's steps as they passed again--to the roar of the
L-train and the jangling of the surface cars.

And right in the middle of it--every drop of blood in my body seemed to
leak out of me, and then come rushing back to my head--I heard Tom's
whistle.

Oh, it's easy to say "run," and I really meant it when I promised Tom.
But you see I hadn't heard that whistle then. When it came, it changed
everything. It set the devil in me loose. I felt as if the world was
tearing something of mine away from me. Stand for it? Not Nance Olden.

I did run--but it was toward the house. That whistle may have meant
"Go!" To me it yelled "Come!"

I got in through the window Tom had left open. The place was still
quiet. Nobody inside had heard that whistle so far as I could tell.

I crept along--the carpets were thick a