Like an uneasy fever in his veins meantime, went and came a vision of
that limp inert figure of the man being carried into the haunted house
as it stood out in the flare of the flash light, one arm hanging
heavily. What did that hand and arm remind him of? Oh--h! The time when
Mark was knocked cold at the Thanksgiving Day Football game last year.
Mark's hand and arm had looked like that--he had held his fingers like
that--when they picked him up. Mark had the base-ball hand! Of course
that rich guy might have been an athlete too, they were sometimes. And
of course Mark was right now at home and in bed, where Billy wished he
was also, but somehow the memory of that still dark "knocked cold"
attitude, and that hanging hand and arm would not leave him. He frowned
in the dark and wished this business was over. Mark was the only living
soul Billy felt he could ever tell about this night's escapade, and he
wasn't sure he could tell him, but he knew if he did that Mark would
understand.

Billy watched anxiously for a streak of light in the East, but none had
come as yet. The moon had left the earth darker than darkness when it
went.

He tried to think what he should do. His bicycle was lying in the
bushes and he ought to get it before daylight. If they went near the
station he would drop off and pick it up. Then he would scuttle through
the woods and get to the Crossroads, and beat it down to the Blue Duck
Tavern. That was the only place open all night where he could
telephone. He didn't like to go to the Blue Duck Tavern on account of
his aunt. She had once made him promise most solemnly, bringing in
something about his dead mother, that he would never go to the Blue
Duck Tavern. But this was a case of necessity, and dead mothers, if
they cared at all, ought to understand. He had a deep underlying faith
in the principle of what a mother--at any rate a dead mother--would be
like. And anyhow, this wasn't the kind of "going" to the Tavern his
aunt had meant. He was keeping the spirit of the promise if not the
letter. In his code the spirit meant much more than the letter--at
least on this occasion. There were often times when he rigidly adhered
to the letter and let the spirit take care of itself, but this was not
one.