How ugly it is!
It offends my eyes."
He turned and looked us full in the face and our hearts became as water.
"Burn it," he said.
Then he turned away again and bowed his head in his arms on the wall.
I don't remember anything clearly till a long time afterward, when I
found myself walking with Mr. G.M. in the wet night on a deserted road
on the outskirts of the town. We were carrying some inflammable things,
flax, tar, matches, etc., which we must have purchased.
Mr. G.M. stopped and looked at me. It was exactly like coming out of a
fainting fit.
"What are we doing with this gear?" he said in a low voice.
"I don't know."
"Better chuck it over a hedge.--"
We made our way to the station in silence. I was thinking of that
desolate figure up there on the hill, leaning over the wall in the dark
and the rain.
We caught the last train to London. In the carriage Mr. G.M. began to
shiver as though he were cold.
"Brrr! that fellow got on my nerves," he said; and we made no further
allusion to the matter.
But as the train, moving slowly, passed a gap which brought us again in
sight of the town, we saw a tongue of flame stream into the sky.
THE SHAME DANCE[18]
By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
"Stories of New York life preferable.
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