The girl cast a miserable glance behind her. She was still crawling away. On the ground beside the porch young Sim raised a strange bleat, which expressed both his fright and his lack of wind. Presently the monster, with a fashionable amble, ascended the steps after the girl.

She grovelled in a corner of the room as the creature took a chair. It seated itself very elegantly on the edge. It held an old cap in both hands. “Don’ make no botheration, Miss Fa’gut. Don’ make no botherations. No, ’deed. I jes’ drap in ter ax you if you won’ do me the proud of acceptin’ ma humble invitation to er daince, Miss Fa’gut.”

She shielded her eyes with her arms tried to crawl past it, but the genial monster blocked the way. “I jes’ drap in ter ax you ’bout er daince, Miss Fa’gut. I ax you if I kin have the magnifercent gratitude of you’ company on that ’casion, Miss Fa’gut.”

In a last outbreak of despair, the girl, shuddering and wailing, threw herself face downward on the floor, while the monster sat on the edge of the chair gabbling courteous invitations, and holding the old hat daintily to his stomach.

At the back of the house, Mrs. Farragut, who was of enormous weight, and who for eight years had done little more than sit in an arm-chair and describe her various ailments, had with speed and agility scaled a high board fence.

XVIII

The black mass in the middle of Trescott’s property was hardly allowed to cool before the builders were at work on another house. It had sprung upward at a fabulous rate. It was like a magical composition born of the ashes. The doctor’s office was the first part to be completed, and he had already moved in his new books and instruments and medicines.

Trescott sat before his desk when the chief of police arrived. “Well, we found him,” said the latter.

“Did you?” cried the doctor. “Where?”

“Shambling around the streets at daylight this morning. I’ll be blamed if I can figure on where he passed the night.”

“Where is he now?”

“Oh, we jugged him. I didn’t know what else to do with him. That’s what I want you to tell me. Of course we can’t keep him. No charge could be made, you know.”

“I’ll come down and get him.”

The official grinned retrospectively. “Must say he had a fine career while he was out. First thing he did was to break up a children’s party at Page’s. Then he went to Watermelon Alley. Whoo! He stampeded the whole outfit. Men, women, and children running pell-mell, and yelling. They say one old woman broke her leg, or something, shinning over a fence. Then he went right out on the main street, and an Irish girl threw a fit, and there was a sort of a riot. He began to run, and a big crowd chased him, firing rocks. But he gave them the slip somehow down there by the foundry and in the railroad yard. We looked for him all night, but couldn’t find him.”

“Was he hurt any? Did anybody hit him with a stone?”

“Guess there isn’t much of him to hurt any more, is there? Guess he’s been hurt up to the limit. No. They never touched him. Of course nobody really wanted to hit him, but you know how a crowd gets. It’s like—it’s like——”