re!" says Leonidas, soothing him down. "We've all enjoyed the
walk, anyway, and maybe----" But just then he hears something that makes
him prick up his ears. "What's the row back there at the gate?" he asks.
Then, turnin' to me, he says: "Shorty, where's Homer?"

"Down there," says I.

"Then come along on the jump," says he. "If there's any trouble lying
around loose he'll get into it."

Down by the gate we could see lanterns by the dozen and we could hear
all sorts of yells and excitement, so we makes our move on the double.
Just as we fetched the gate some one hollers:

"There he goes! Lynch the villain!"

We sees a couple of long legs strike out, and gets a glimpse of a head
wrapped up in a shawl. It was Homer, all right, and he had the gang
after him. He took a four-foot fence at a hurdle and was streakin' off
through a plowed field into the dark.

"Hi, Fales!" sings out Leonidas. "Come back here, you chump!"

But Homer kept right on. Maybe he didn't hear, and perhaps he was too
scared to stop if he did. All we could do was to get into the
free-for-all with the others.

"What did he do?" yells Leonidas at a sandy-whiskered man who carried a
clothes-line and was shoutin', "Lynch him! Lynch him!" between jumps.

"Do!" says the man. "Ain't you heard? Why, he choked Mother Bickell to
death and robbed her of seventeen dollars. He's wearin' her shawl now."

As near as we could make out, the thing happened like this: When the
tail enders came rushin' up with all kinds of wild yarns about robbers
and such, they catches sight of Homer, leanin' up in the shadow of the
gate. Some one holds a lantern up to his face and an old woman spots the
shawl.

"It's Mother Bickell's," says she. "Where did he get it?"

That was enough. They went for Homer like he'd set fire to a synagogue.
Homer tried to tell 'em who he was, and about his heart, but he talked
too slow, or his voice wa'n't strong enough; and when they began to plan
on yankin' him up then and there, without printin' his picture in the
paper, or a trial, he heaves up a yell and lights out for the
boarding-house.

Ten hours before I wouldn't have matched Homer against a one-legged man,
but the way he was gettin' over the ground then was worth the price of
admission. I have done a little track work myself, and Leonidas didn't
show up for any glue-foot, but Homer would have made the tape ahead of
us for any distance under two miles. He'd cleared the crowd and was