"Say,
let's you an' me skin out o' this. I'll get my dough to-night."
"Oh, Dennis!" she murmured, in piteous protestation, "we'd burn in
eternal torment."
"We'd burn together," said Dennis. "Anyways, if this ain't torment,
and if Barker ain't Beelzebub himself, I'm a liar."
She shook her head, with the tears streaming down her thin, white
cheeks.
"Gee!" said Dennis, reduced to silence.
"I tuk him for better and worse," sobbed Mamie.
"You might ha' guessed that it would be worse," growled Dennis. Then,
desperately, he blurted out, "Because you're dead-set on keepin' the
seventh commandment, you're jest naterally drivin' me to break the
sixth."
"What?"
"I've said it. And he saved my life, too. But when I look at yer, I
get to thinking." His voice sank to a hoarse whisper. "I think lots,
nights. He comes back to ye alone, through them trees, and there's one
place where the pine needles is thick as moss. And I mind me what a
Dago told me onst. He'd killed his man, he had, stabbed him from
behind with a knife he showed me: jest an ordinary knife, only sharp.
An' he told me how he done it, whar to strike--savvy? It goes in
slick!"
He stopped, seeing that Mamie was regarding him with wide-eyed horror
and consternation.
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