the shining rails.  But an instant later he heard a familiar whoop, and, staring around, saw Jimmy sitting on a load of wheat that was standing between the railroad tracks.  In this the boy had fallen after his sidewise jump had thrown him from the moving train.  When Henry Sears saw his son, Jimmy was holding his foot, jiggling it vigorously and roaring, moved half by the hysteria of fright and half by the pain of a fresh laceration of his bruised toe.  The boy’s face was black with coal-dust and wheat chaff, and tears were striping his features grotesquely.  The palsy of terror loosened its steel bands from the father’s limbs, and he ran to the wheat-wagon.  Jimmy Sears, for all he or his father know, may have floated to the ground from the wagon bed.  But a moment later, in a frenzy wherein anger furnished only a sub-conscious motor, and joy pumped wildly at the expanding valves of his blissful heart, Henry Sears took his thirteen-year-old son across his knee, and spanked him in a delirium of ecstasy; spanked him merrily, while a heavenly peace glorified his paternal soul; spanked him, caring not how many times the little body wriggled, and the little voice howled, and the dirty little fingers foiled his big, bony hand as it fell.  At the end of the felicitous occasion, the father found his voice,—­

“Haven’t I told you enough, sir, to keep off the cars?  Haven’t I?  Haven’t I?  Answer me, sir.  Do you hear me?  Haven’t I?”

And Jimmy Sears knew by that turn of the conversation that the episodes of the stolen chicken and of the broken showcases were forgotten, so he nodded a contrite head, His father returned to earth by giving his son a few casual cuffs, with, “Will you try that again, sir?” and continued,—­

“Now, sir, let me see you walk right straight home.  And just you let me catch you down here again!”

Jimmy was wise enough to hurry along as fast as his bleeding foot would take him.  He saw the advantage of a motion to adjourn without further debate, and the motion prevailed.

An hour later, Jimmy Sears had washed the dirt from the interior of an irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his hair.  Until the twilight fell he stayed in the conning-tower in the Penningtons’ barn, and watched his home through a crack between two boards.  When he saw his father leave the house for town after supper, Jimmy hurried down a lane in sight of his father, yet out of his father’s reach.  At the close of twilight, Jimmy Sears came up the hard-beaten path that led to his home, through burdock weeds and sunflowers.  There was a light in the kitchen, and through the window he could see Mrs. Jones moving about.  He observed that the supper dishes were being put away.  He saw his eldest sister, with the tea towel in her hands, chatting happily with Mrs. Jones.  The spectacle filled him with rage.  He felt that the other children had deserted him, and that, in the war against the new baby, they had left him to fight unaided.  He met a little brother, who greeted him with,—­