Captain Saulsby was still asleep when he came back, a most alarming sleep, he thought, never having seen such a dead, heavy stupor before. Wrong as it seemed to leave the old man alone, it seemed worse to wait longer without doing anything, so Billy decided to set off for the Shutes’ at once. Sally’s father or mother would certainly come back with him and would arrange for some way of taking the Captain to his own house. He put on his coat and went out hurriedly. He was glad to get out into the last of the sunshine; he somehow did not like the feeling of that place inside.
The way to Sally Shute’s had seemed pleasant enough the day he had walked it with her two weeks ago. But now it was quite different; the tall pine-trunks looked stiff and forbidding, the slender white Indian pipes, pale and ghostly in the dense shadows. Very little sunshine filtered down through the heavy branches, and presently even that was gone. He walked quickly; then, he hardly knew why, began to run.
It was a most breathless, tired boy that arrived finally at the end of the lane and ran across the Shutes’ garden. He stepped on
