There seemed to be a singing along the ground. Was he losing his nerve

lying here so long? No, there it was again! It couldn't be possible

that he could hear so far as two miles up that road. It was hard and

smooth macadam of course, that highway, but it couldn't be that--what

was it they called it?--vibrations?--would reach so far! It must be. He

would ask Cart about that.

The humming continued and grew more distinct, followed by a sort of

throbbing roar that seemed coming toward him, and yet was still very

far away. It must be a car at the Detour. In a moment it would turn

down the bumpy road toward Sabbath Valley, and very likely some of

those old broken whiskey bottles along the way would puncture a tire

and the guy would take till morning getting anywhere. Perhaps he could

even get away in time to come up innocently enough and help him out. A

guy like that might not know how to patch a puncture.

But the sound was distinctly coming on. Billy opened one eye, then the

other, and hastily scanned the sky in either direction for an

aeroplane, but the sky was as clear as crystal without a speck, and the

sound was distinctly drawing nearer.

A voice from the roadside hurtled sharply across: "Hist! There! He's coming! Lay still! Remember you get five more bucks

if you pull this off!"

A cold chill crept down Billy's back on tiny needle-pointed fringe of

feet like a centipede. There was a sudden constriction in his throat

and a leaden weight on each eye. He could not have opened them if he

had tried, for a great white light stabbed across them and seemed to be

holding them down for inspection. The thing he had wanted to have

happen had come, and he was frightened; frightened cold clear to the

soul of him--not at the thing that was about to come, but at the fact

that he had broken faith with himself after all; broken faith with the

haloed girl at the organ in the golden light; broken faith--for thirty

pieces of silver! In that awful moment he was keenly conscious of the

fact that when he got the other five there would be just thirty dollars

for the whole! Thirty pieces of silver and the judgment day already

coming on!




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