“I should think he would have worn it,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a scornfull tone.

“Here’s the bath towle,” Mr. Patten went on.  “You may recognize the initials.  I don’t.”

“B.  P. A.,” said Mrs. Beecher.  “Look here, don’t they call that—­that fliberty-gibbet next door `Barbara’?”

“The little devil!” said Mr. Patten, in a raging tone.  “She let him out, and of course he’s done no work on the Play or anything.  I’d like to choke her.”

Nobody spoke then, and my heart beat fast and hard.  I leave it to anybody, how they’d like to be shut in a closet and threatened with a violent Death from without.  Would or would they not ever be the same person afterwards?

“I’ll tell you what I’d do,” said the Beecher woman.  “I’d climb up the back of father, next door, and tell him what his little Daughter has done, Because I know she’s mixed up in it, towle or no towle.  Reg is always sappy when they’re seventeen.  And she’s been looking moon-eyed at him for days.”

Well, the Pattens went away, and Mrs. Beecher manacured her Nails,—­I could hear her fileing them—­and sang around and was not much concerned, although for all she knew he was in the briney deep, a corpse.  How true it is that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

I got very tired and much hoter, and I sat down on the floor.  After what seemed like hours, Mrs. Patten came back, all breathless, and she said: 

“The girl’s gone to, Clare.”

“What girl?”

“Next door.  If you want Excitement, they’ve got it.  The mother is in hysterics and there’s a party searching the beech for her body, The truth is, of course, if that towle means anything.”

“That Reg has run away with her, of course,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a resined tone.  “I wish he would grow up and learn somthing.  He’s becoming a nusance.  And when there are so many Interesting People to run away with, to choose that chit!”

Yes, she said that, And in my retreat I could but sit and listen, and of course perspire, which I did freely.  Mrs. Patten went away, after talking about the “scandle” for some time.  And I sat and thought of the beech being searched for my Body, a thought which filled my Eyes with tears of pity for what might have been, I still hoped Mrs. Beecher would go to bed, but she did not.  Through the key hole I could see her with a Book, reading, and not caring at all that Mr. Beecher’s body, and mine to, might be washing about in the cruel Sea, or have eloped to New York.

I lothed her.

At last I must have slept, for a bell rang, and there I was still in the closet, and she was ansering it.

“Arrested?” she said, “Well, I should think he’d better be, If what you say about clothing is true....  Well, then—­what’s he arrested for?...  Oh, kidnaping!  Well, if I’m any judge, they ought to arrest the Archibald girl for kidnaping him.  No, don’t bother me with it tonight.  I’ll try to read myself to sleep.”