The Wild Olive

ndack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but all dis

rgan. Through the pines and in the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses. There w

entirely his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have covered it too, since they were men born to the mountai

ctitioner. He was told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification; the other short and sp

whose cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall, tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pump

ward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly spiriting from

nzied instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one imperative necessity-to go on-to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded. Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that eve

is half afraid. More than any one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling leaf or

ght lead even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The electric fluid could not have seemed more

habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's door and ask

s little danger in doing so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he made out a few acre

ng, gray tentacles that had once sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the

st slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him, mysterious

first made his rush outward the one thing that seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he

eld him stock-still, gazing into space. He was free-but free only t

ed, inwardly. "I'm a man-with human ri

ilized, domestic. He would not go back to the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same th

ldenrod, he stole down the slope, making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the foreg

ose outward aspect, even at night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze of the August ev

or the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging above it. Th

bservations more at ease. He perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common i

han that for food. They represented that human society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the g

ght lured him as it might lure an insect of the night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew the danger of his situation, but he could not br

omfort and a modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children, seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin, might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell over the hand and arm supporting her cheek

Billy, I don't believe they let yo

answer, given with sturdy assura

w; so you'd both better

wo who were seated in the shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long window and look

t he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this dangerous ground, but, crouching low,

lderness. He made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to the window. He was in informal evening dress-a circumstance that, in this land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received the impression of having seen hi

could not as yet have heard of his escape. If he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and y

, making an effort to control a cough. "You must have f

only as a murmur, but he guesse

ies is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipat

rd could distinguish nothing, but ag

, "is something with which you have nothing to do. Your pa

what was said in reply, but once mo

the best of it; for since it relieves you of resp

His next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to take refuge in a church-eager only for the instant's safety. He had sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room, before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heed

ou

ou

got to her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror i

voice of forced calmness, "whom

he man

e man I-I-sentenced t