One second he held her,
the next, Jimmy smothering under the hay, threw up an arm, and
called like a petulant child, "Dannie! Make shun quit shinish my
fashe!"
And Dannie awoke to the realization that Mary was another man's,
and that man, one who trusted him completely. The problem was so
much too big for poor Dannie that reason kindly slipped a cog. He
broke from the grasp of the woman, fled through the back door,
and took to the woods.
He ran as if fiends were after him, and he ran and ran. And when
he could run no longer, he walked, but he went on. Just on and
on. He crossed forests and fields, orchards and highways, streams
and rivers, deep woods and swamps, and on, and on he went. He
felt nothing, and saw nothing, and thought nothing, save to go
on, always on. In the dark he stumbled on and through the day he
staggered on, and he stopped for nothing, save at times to lift
water to his parched lips.
The bushes took his hat, the thorns ripped his shirt, the water
soaked his shoes and they spread and his feet came through and
the stones cut them until they bled. Leaves and twigs stuck in
his hair, and his eyes grew bloodshot, his lips and tongue
swollen, and when he could go no further on his feet, he crawled
on his knees, until at last he pitched forward on his face and
lay still.
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