"You wait here, son," said Earle. "Wait for Mrs. Davis and Aunt Cindy.
Tell 'em to follow the bark. You know the place, don't you? That's the
boy. Come on, John! Speak to us, Frank! Speak to us, old man!"

The two men were looking up into a lofty, tossing tree when Tommy and
the women reached them. Above them the trees thrashed back and forth
bewilderingly, showing the stormy sky, then covering it over, then
showing it again. And there, looking up into the tree also, eyes
shining, tongue hanging out, sides heaving, was old Frank. Once he
reared up on the trunk of the tree as if to make sure again. He whiffed
the bark, his tail wagging. Then he jumped down and looked up once more.

Earle's voice was strangely quiet when he spoke.

"I see him," he said. They all crowded about. "My God--he's way out at
the end of the top limb. If his head swims----" He began to talk loud,
his face still raised. "Joe, listen, old man. We are all your friends
down here. Tommy's here."

Davis had sat down on the ground and was hurriedly pulling off his
shoes. His beard fell down over his shirt and his hands were trembling.

"It won't do, John," spoke Steve Earle, and Tommy, aghast, saw the look
on his father's face. "The limb he's on will never hold you. He might
try to get farther out, and if he does----"

Then, as calmly as she could, Mrs. Davis called to the boy, pleading
with him to come down, telling him that she would be his mother, not
knowing, anxious, excited woman that she was, that the word probably
meant nothing to that child tossing up there in mid-air.

And now for the first time Tommy's straining eyes saw--saw the white
face, the little body pressed against the swaying limb, saw the frantic
arms clinging to the lofty perch, saw the whole tree moving dizzily back
and forth against the stormy sky, as if in the hands of a giant who was
trying to shake that tiny figure down.

The voice of the boy rang out shrill and clear above the tumult of the
wind and the tearing leaves.

"Joe! You hear me, Joe, don't you?" The voice was quiet and sure now,
the nerves of the man that was to be had steadied. Only grammar went all
to pieces; it had been deteriorating these last twenty-four hours. A
boy's grammar is a structure always ready to tumble, like a house of
cards.

"They ain't no cop down here, Joe. We done sent him home. He's gone,
Joe, honest he has. You know me, Joe. I wouldn't tell you no lie!"

Now the figure up there sti