Okay.'
Mrs. Jellicoe was off like a hare. She ran all the way back to the house and breathlessly did as she was told. Then she hung up the phone and rolled her codfish eyes up at the ceiling. The officer hadn't told her she was
The crowd beside the grave of the British soldiers was increasing. Patrolman Vine had all he could do to keep them from pressing forward and trampling the ground around the body. Arthur Furry, standing patiently to one side, looked modestly at the ground. He, Arthur Furry, had practically witnessed a murder, a real murder. There would be pictures and headlines. BOY SCOUT DICSOVERS BODY! Arthur's eyes widened. Whatever happened, he mustn't forget to do his very best at all times. He mustn't forget that he would be representing Troop 296 of Acton, in fact the whole entire Boy Scout movement. It sure was lucky he'd been so late. It was funny, but yesterday when he was supposed to be cleaning up his room, it was almost like something had told him he shouldn't do it, he should watch TV instead. It was almost like a voice. Arthur glanced gratefully at the body of the man he had seen in the agony of death. But that was uncomfortable. His eyes slid up to the inscription set into the wall above the body. The inscription lamented with condescending sympathy the two British redcoats who had fallen at the bridge.
THEY CAME THREE THOUSAND MILES, AND DIED,
TO KEEP THE PAST UPON ITS THRONE;
UNHEARD, BEYOND THE OCEAN TIDE,
THEIR ENGLISH MOTHER MADE HER MOAN.
*18*
Freddy was looking for something that would be nice to play with, like a tractor engine or a big greasy battery. There was nothing in the barn where his father and John were tooling up the corn planter. Freddy had just learned to walk, so he toddled out the door and wandered down behind it toward the red-painted shed where the cider press was, sitting down occasionally with a plop and getting up again. The door of the shed was around on the other side, facing the river. Freddy, his balloon wobbling on the end of the string on his wrist, started around the shed. Then he stopped.
'Horsie,' he said. There was a man sitting high up in the sky on a horse. A funny man. A funny lady? The top of the man was like a lady, a funny lady. The lady looked back at Freddy. Then the lady turned up the sides of her mouth, and beckoned with one finger. Freddy trotted forward. The lady reached out and snapped the string of Freddy's balloon. The balloon started to sail up into the sky. The rest of the string fell down over Freddy's arm to the ground. Freddy looked at the string, unbelieving. Then he looked up into the sky at his disappearing balloon. He reached up for it and started to cry.
Gwen, going out of the house with a basket of wet wash, saw a big red bird in the wrangle of elm branches below the barn. No, it was too big for a bird, and it was floating up out of the tree now into the sky. It was Freddy's balloon. Poor Freddy. She put the basket down, hearing the telephone ring, and ran across the road. Freddy wasn't hard to find. He had gotten away from Tom and was standing beside the door of the cider shed, hollering his heart out, pointing up into the sky at the little red dot that had been his balloon. The long string dangled from his wrist to the ground. Gwen picked him up. There was a good three feet of string left. How had Freddy managed to break the balloon off at the top? Perhaps he had caught it on the edge of the shed roof, or on a nail or something. He was bellowing about a horsie and a funny lady. Gwen tried to comfort him, but he was inconsolable. When Gwen got back to the house, Grandmaw met her at the door, her face strange.
'Ernest Gross is dead,' she said. 'He was shot.'
'Who?' said Gwen idiotically. 'I mean, who shot him?'
'Someone on a horse, they think, dressed like Sam Prescott.'
'Funny lady,' roared Freddy. 'Horsie!'
Gwen looked at Freddy, her lips tight. Not Charley? Then she looked grimly at Grandmaw. 'I'm not going to have him bothered. I don't care who...'
Freddy was sucking his thumb, his cranky head on his mother's shoulder. He would be asleep in a minute. 'No, of course not,' said Grandmaw.
*19*
In 1846 when Henry Thoreau spent the night in jail as the guest of Sam Staples, the Concord Town Jail was a modest boxlike affair standing on ground now occupied by a parking lot behind Vanderhoof's Hardware Store on Main Street. By the nineteen-sixties the police department had grown to a force of twenty men, with a new headquarters on Walden Street shared by the Fire Department. The police occupied the right half of the brick building, with their own laboratory, dark room, firing range, parking meter repair facility, three radio-equipped automobiles and one walking mobile unit. Both Fire and Police Departments shared the use of the short-wave radio antenna. It was a good group of men, displaying the discreet and iron virtue of the best class of blue-coated law enforcers in the land. All of them were great broad-chested men except their Chief, James Flower. Jimmy was nine inches under the required minimum height, and he had worked his way into the Force and up to his present position through personality, competence and a special dispensation of the Legislature.
Thirty seconds after Sergeant Luther Ordway had hung up on Mrs. Jellicoe, a small parade of cars was turning out onto Walden Street, with Jimmy Flower already ticking off on his fingers a list of things to do. At the bridge he took calm and swift control. Patrolman Harold Vine passed on to him Arthur Furry's information and described the examination of the body by Mr. Ralph Chope of Houston, Texas. Chief Flower asked a few questions of Arthur Furry and Ralph Chope. He looked at Arthur's bright eye and flabby, pale face and directed that he be sent home in a patrol car. Then, after examining the body of Ernest Goss, he walked along the shore, looking at the ground. He
