The City of Fire | Page 5

cash. You see that
man's got some money that oughtta be mine by good rights, and I
wantta get it."
"I see!" said Billy nonchalantly, "An' whatcha gonta do if he don't
come across?"
The man gave him a scared look.
"Oh, nothin' sinful son; just give him a rest fer a few days where he
won't see his friends, until he gets ready to see it the way I do."
"H'm!" said Billy narrowing his gray eyes to two slits. "An' how much
did ya say ya paid down?"
The man looked up angrily.
"I don't say I pay nothing down. If you do the work right you get the
cash t'night, a round twenty-five, and it's twenty bucks more'n you
deserve. Why off in this deserted place you ought ta be glad to get
twenty-five cents fer doin' nothin' but lay in the road."
The boy with one foot on the pedal mounted sideways and slid along
the platform slowly, indifferently.

"Guess I gotta date t'night," he called over his shoulder as he swung the
other leg over the cross bar.
The heavy man made a dive after him and caught him by the arm.
"Look here, Kid, I ain't in no mood to be toyed with," he said gruffly,
"You said you wanted a job an' I'm being square with you. Just to show
I'm being square here's five down."
Billy looked at the ragged green bill with a slight lift of his shoulders.
"Make it ten down and it's a go," he said at last with a take-it-or-
leave-it air. "I hadn't oughtta let you off'n less'n half, such a shady job
as this looks, but make it a ten an' I'll close with ya. If ya don't like it
ask the station agent to help ya. I guess he wouldn't object. He's right
here handy, too. I live off quite a piece."
But the man had pulled out another five and was crowding the bills
upon him. He had seen a light in that boy's eye that was dangerous.
What was five in a case of a million anyway?
Billy received the boodle as if it had been chewing gum or a soiled
handkerchief, and stuffed it indifferently into his already bulging
pocket in a crumple as if it were not worth the effort.
"A'rright. I'll be here!" he declared, and mounting his wheel with an air
of finality, sailed away down the platform, curved off the high step
with a bump into the road and coasted down the road below the tunnel
toward Monopoly, leaving Sabbath Valley glistening in the sunshine
off to the right. With all that money in his pocket what was the use of
going back to Sabbath Valley for his lunch and making his trip a good
two miles farther? He would beat the baseball team to it.
The thick one stood disconsolately, his grimy cap in his hand and
scratched his dusty head of curls in a troubled way.
"Gosh!" he said wrathfully, "The little devil! Now I don't know what
he'll do. I wonder--! But what else could I do?"

II
Over in Sabbath Valley quiet sweetness brooded, broken now and again
by the bell-like sound of childish laughter here and there. The birds
were holding high carnival in the trees, and the bees humming drowsy
little tunes to pretend they were not working.
Most of the men were away at work, some in Monopoly or Economy,
whither they went in the early morning in their tin Lizzies to a little

store or a country bank, or a dusty law office; some in the fields of the
fertile valley; and others off behind the thick willow fringe where
lurked the home industries of tanning and canning and knitting, with a
plush mill higher up the slope behind a group of alders and beeches, its
ugly stone chimneys picturesque against the mountain, but doing its
best to spoil the little stream at its feet with all colors of the rainbow, at
intervals dyeing its bright waters.
The minister sat in his study with his window open across the lawn
between the parsonage and the church, a lovely velvet view with the
old graveyard beyond and the wooded hill behind. He was faintly
aware of the shouting of the birds in glad carnival in the trees, and the
busy droning of the bees, as he wrote an article on Modern Atheism for
a magazine in the distant world; but more keenly alive to the song on
the lips of his child, but lately returned from college life in one of the
great universities for women. He smiled as he wrote, and a light came
in his deep thoughtful eyes. She had gone and come, and she was still
unspoiled, mentally, physically,