ere she might
be safe, where she might be unmolested?

"Go on away!" she said sharply, and would have hurried down the stair.
She looked this way and that. There was not a man to whom she might
appeal as her champion--not one! She must trust herself.

"Go along!" said she. But actually she saw tears in the eyes of the
half-witted giant now. "No, Johnnie; but I'll walk with you with these
others as far as the corner of the square."

"All right," said he. "I'll do--I'll do that." A wide gap opened in the
ranks of the slow procession on the sidewalk now as these two joined in.
Not too wide, however, for there were certain ones who must keep track
of all details regarding this epochal event.

"Where is your father, Johnnie?" asked Aurora Lane, quietly and
distinctly, so that all might hear.

"He--he--I don't--I don't know. I ain't--I ain't been home. I'm out!"
said Johnnie.

"You've not been home? What do you mean?"

"Wasn't there--wasn't there a funer'l for somebody today?" he asked
mysteriously. "I can whip any man in Jackson County. My pa said so.
We've--we've done it--we'd done it then if he--if he hadn't pitched on
to me. He done that."

A sudden terror caught Aurora Lane's soul as she realized that the
addled mind of this half-wit was more than to a usual extent gone wrong.
She feared him with every fiber in her body. She stepped aside quickly
as he made a loutish thrust at her arm, as though to pinch her.

"I'll pinch you!" said he. "You know why?"

"No, don't! Go away!" she exclaimed, and pushed out her hand.

"'Cause--'cause I like you!" said the half-wit. "That's why!"

Then for a time those who crowded up at the rear heard little, until he
resumed.

"Oh, I know a lot more I could tell you some time. I ain't--I ain't been
home at all. I'm just looking round. Ain't no one can stop me. There was
some sort of--of funer'l, wasn't there, in town today? Me and my father,
we can lick ary two men in Jackson County."

He would have made some sort of rude approach once more. But now even
the tardy chivalry of these men of Spring Valley came back to them. Two
or three stepped in between him and Aurora Lane. "Here, you," said the
voice of one, "that'll do! Quit it now."

Aurora Lane did not have time to thank her rescuers. The painful
situation was relieved suddenly. Just as they were turning at the corner
of the public square there hurried up a man, an oldish man, untidy even
in his Sunday garb, half runni