into a sort of country.  Strollo said they should get out.  It was very hot and Toni was weak from weariness and lack of food, but his heart was light and he followed Strollo steadily down the wilting road.  After going about a mile they crossed some fields near where people were playing a game at hitting little balls with sticks.  It was astonishing how far they could strike the balls—­entirely out of sight.

“Is this Yonkers?” asked Toni.

“It is near here,” answered Strollo.  “We are going by a short way.”

They entered some thick woods and came out upon another field.  Toni was now so faint that he begged his friend to stop.

“Can we not get some food?” he inquired; “I can hardly walk.”

“There is a man in that field,” said Strollo.  “Go and ask him.”

So Toni plodded over to the man who was digging mushrooms and asked him in broken English where they could get something to eat.  The man told him that it was a long way.  They would have to take the trolley to Yonkers.  There was a restaurant there called the “Promised Land,” where one could get Italian dishes.  He seemed to take a kindly interest in Toni and in Strollo, who had remained some distance behind, and Toni gave him a cigar—­a “Cremo”—­the last one he had.  Then Strollo led the way back into the woods.

It was almost sunset, and the long, low beams slanting through the tree trunks made it hard to see.  They went deeper and deeper into the woods.  Presently Strollo, who was leading the way, stopped and said: 

“We are going in the wrong direction.  We must turn around and go back.”

Toni turned.  As he did so Strollo drew a long knife and plunged it again and again through Toni’s body.

* * * * *

Strollo spent that night, under an assumed name, at the Mills Hotel in Bleecker Street.  He had stabbed himself accidentally in the knee and also in the left hand in the fury of his attack, and when he arose in the morning the sheets were covered with blood.  There was also blood on his shoes, which had been new, but he took his knife and scraped it off.  He had experienced a strange sort of terrified exaltation the night before, and in the early light as he crept downstairs and out of the hotel he could not have told whether he were more glad or afraid.  For he had three hundred dollars in his pocket, more than he had ever seen at any one time before—­as much as a man could save in two whole years.  He would be a king now for a long time.  He need not work.  He could eat, drink and play cards and read some books he had heard about.  As for finding him out—­never!  The police would not even know who Torsielli was, to say nothing of who had killed him, for he had removed, as he thought, everything in Toni’s pockets.  There would be a dead man in the morgue, that was all.  He could go back to Lambertville and say that he had left Toni with his brother, at Yonkers, and that would be the end of it.  First, though, he would buy some new clothes.