“It was not my place to do so. And anyway, he had a revolver.”
“Did you see it?” Billy asked mercilessly.
“No,” was the answer, “but he carried one in his pocket: he always does.”
Then, seeing how utterly he had betrayed himself by this last speech, he got up and walked slowly away down toward the shore, his one object being apparently to hide his stricken face from them.
The boy was about to hurry after him, but Sally put her hand upon his arm.
“Let him alone,” she said; “the German is gone and we can’t do anything now. No, Billy, don’t go after him.”
Billy hesitated, feeling, in spite of himself, that his anger was beginning to change to sympathy. He would still have followed, had not Sally’s hand restrained him and Sally’s voice become insistent.
“I know him better than you do,” she maintained, “and I won’t believe any harm of Johann. No, let him go.”
Billy walked slowly back through the woods, across the causeway and up past the meadow to Captain Saulsby’s little house. The opening poppies were blowing in the
