" Her hands were wavering over him in a
palsy. "Where can he go, Paw? Where's the best place for him to go? I'll
tell you, Steve. Is your--your car anywhere near?"

"It's outside at the door. I came back in it."

She got to her feet, and her urgency was ferocious. "Then you get right
in this minute and go up to the old place--the little old house opposite
the pond. Go as fast as you can. You know the place--where we lived
before you were born. There's two big oak-trees st-standing there, and a
pond just across the road. You go there and tell Susan--what shall he
tell Susan, father? What shall he tell Susan? We'll stay here, and--and
we'll bribe the elevator-boy to say you haven't come home at all, and if
the po-po-lice come here we'll say we're expecting you, but we haven't
seen you for ever so long. Won't we, Paw? That's what we'll say, won't
we, Paw?"

The old man stood up to the lightning like an old oak. Trees do not run.
They stand fast and take what the sky sends them. Old Coburn shook his
white hair as a tree its leaves in a blast of wind before he spoke.

"Steve, my boy, I don't know what call you had to do this, but it's no
use trying to run away and hide. They'll get you wherever you go. The
telegraph and the cable and the detectives--no, it's not a bit of use.
It only makes things look worse. Put on your hat and come with me. We'll
go to the police before they come for you. I'll go with you, and I'll
see you through."

But flight, not fight, was the woman's one hope. She was wild with
resistance to the idea of surrender. Her panic confirmed the young man
in his one impulse--to get away. He dashed out into the hall, and when
the father would have pursued, the mother thrust him aside, hurried
past, and braced herself against the door. He put off her clinging,
clutching hands as gently as he might, but she resisted like a tigress
at bay, and before he could drag her aside they heard the iron-barred
door of the elevator glide open and clang shut. And there they stood in
the strange place, the old man staggered with the realization of the
future, the old woman imbecile with fear.

What harm is it the honest oaks do, that Heaven hates them so and its
lightnings search them out with such peculiar frenzy?

III

Having no arenas where captive gladiators and martyrs satisfy the public
longing for the sight of bleeding flesh and twitching nerve, the people
of our day flock to the court-rooms for their keenest