The Burglar and the Blizzard: A Christmas Story | Page 8

objection, I'll go and bring her back here."
"If you have any respect for your skin you won't move from that chair."
"Oh, the devil, Holland, don't be so--" he hesitated for the right word, not wishing to be unjust,--"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold here. Think what it must be in that shanty."
"Very unpleasant, I should think."
"More than that, more than that,--suffering, I have no doubt. Why, she might freeze to death if anything went wrong with the fire. It is not safe. It's a distinct risk to leave her. Let alone that a storm like this would scare any girl alone in a place like that, there is some danger to her life. Don't you see that?"
"Yes, I see," returned Geoffrey, "but you ought to have thought of that before you came burgling in a blizzard."
"Thought of it! Of course I thought of it. But I had no idea whatever of being caught, with old McFarlane laid up and the two boys away, it did seem about the safest job yet."
There was a pause, for Geoffrey evidently had no intention of even arguing the matter, and presently McVay continued:
"Now you know you would feel badly to-morrow morning if anything went wrong with her, and you knew you could have helped it!"
"Helped it!" said Geoffrey. "What do you mean? Let you loose on the county for the sake of a story no sane man would believe?"
"Well," returned McVay judicially, "perhaps you could not do that, but," he added brightly, "you could go yourself."
"Yes," said Geoffrey, "I _could_--"
"Then I think you ought to be getting along."
"Upon my word, McVay," said Holland, "you are something of a humorist, aren't you?"
McVay again looked puzzled, but rose to the occasion.
"Oh, hardly that," he said. "Every now and then I have a way of putting things,--a way of my own. I find often I am able to amuse people, but if you are cheerful yourself, you make other people so. I was just thinking that it must be a great thing for men who have been in prison for years to have some one come in with a new point of view."
"I'm sure you will be an addition to prison life. It's an ill wind, you know."
"It's an ill wind for my sister, literally enough. Come, Holland, you certainly can trust me. Do be starting."
"Why, what do you take me for?" said the exasperated Geoffrey. "Do you really suppose that I am going, looking for a den of your accomplices in order to give you a chance to escape?"
"'Accomplices!'" exclaimed McVay; and for the first time a shade of anger crossed his brow; "'_accomplices'_! I have no accomplices. Anything I do I think I am able to do alone. Still," he added putting aside his annoyance, "if you feel nervous about leaving me I'd just as lief give you my word of honour to stay here until you come back."
"Your _what_?"
McVay made a slight gesture of his shoulders, as if he were being a good deal tried. "Oh, anything you like," he said. "I suppose you could lock me up in a closet."
"I don't think we need trouble to arrange the details," said Geoffrey drily. "But I'll tell you what I will do. After I get you safely in jail to-morrow, I'll get a trap and go and look up this hut."
"It may be too late then."
"It may," said Geoffrey, and continued to read.
Yet he had no further satisfaction in his book. He knew that the burglar kept casting meditative glances at him as if in wonder at such brutality, and in truth, his own mind was not entirely at ease. If by any chance the story were true,--if there was a woman at his doors freezing to death, how could he sit enjoying the fire? But, on the other hand, could any one have a more evident motive for deception than his informant? What better opportunity for escape could be arranged? It was so evident, so impudent as to be almost convincing. What more likely for instance, than that the hut was a regular rendezvous for criminals and tramps, that by going he would be walking into the veriest trap? Yet again there was the report confirmed by Harris's story that a woman was in some way connected with these robberies. The wind whistled round the house with a suggestion of difficulty, of combat with the elements, of actual danger, perhaps, that suddenly gave Geoffrey a new view of delay. Had it not something the air of cowardice, or at least of laziness? He found his eyes had read the same page three times, while his brain was busy devising means by which McVay could be secured in his absence--if he went.
At length he rose suddenly to his feet.
"I'll go," he said, "but