, with
bleeding head, with a gash over his right brow, crossed the forest
toward the tracks. By dint of persuasion, Young forced the boy to give
his father's name. He had caught enough of the talk between the
fishermen to know that Tess was the cause of their quarrel. But what
Ezra had threatened to tell about Skinner he did not know. Two miles
from Ithaca the boy became light-headed and feeble. His tongue was
loosened in his delirium, and Young heard a story that made his heart
beat faster and revived hopes he had considered almost dead. Through the
moonbeams that slanted to the tracks he imagined he saw a little figure
skirting the rays, with flying red hair. Not for anything in the world
would he lose sight of the boy. He had the first clue in the case that
so interested him. Acquittal for the father of Tessibel Skinner was
within his grasp. It was late when he dragged Ezra, laughing and
gibbering, into a private hospital. He installed a nurse beside the boy,
bidding her keep a record of any delirious mutterings he might make, and
to observe silence about them.

* * * * *

Ben Letts wondered what Satisfied Longman would ask about his son. He
spoke to the father first, his thick brain trying to avoid trouble.

"Ye air both got a lot of nerve to keep three men at the south reel,
when I air the only one here."

"Where's Ezy?" asked Longman.

There was no anxiety in his voice. He was tumbling the fish into the
cars.

"I ain't no way a-knowin' where he air. He skipped away, and said how
he wanted to speak to his pappy, and I ain't seed him since.... Ezy were
a fool when he was born."

"Gone home, like a sneakin' kid," put in Jake Brewer. "He ain't no
hankerin' for nettin'. He ain't been right since Orn Skinner shot the
gamekeeper."

"He air my brat," replied Longman, "and he air good, if he does do what
he oughtn't to sometimes. I air satisfied with him.... Let's go home."

And, silently, as a spectral fleet, the boats lapped their way back,
edging the shore carefully.

* * * * *

Far into the night Satisfied Longman and the tired mother waited for
their boy.

"He'll show up to break'us," soothed the father; but the mother trembled
with terror. It was the first evening Ezra had missed the netting, and
he had never been from home for a whole night.

As day after day passed, it was noised about the settlement that Ezra
Longman had run away, some