Read Online The Clock by James Lincoln Collier - Free Book Online Page A

get him sooner or later.”
    I knew now that I would have to do it myself. I should have known that Tom would mess it up some way. He’d spent all of his life being whipped and shouted at, and pushed here and there, and it had taken a lot of the heart out of him. He wanted to kill Mr. Hoggart—dreamed about it half the day, I reckoned—but it wasn’t likely he’d actually do it.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T HE NEXT S UNDAY the first snow came, light flakes dancing down onto the hard, dry ground. We walked to church with it blowing in our faces. “It’s going to pile up,” George said. “I can feel it.”
    â€œWhat we need is a sleigh,” Pa suddenly said. “Go to church in style and comfort.”
    Ma gave him a look. “Best to get a horse first, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    â€œYes,” Pa said. “Now that you mention it, I’ve got my eye on one. Edmund Wilkins has a fine animal he wants to sell. I think I might just do it. A first-rate saddle horse.”
    I didn’t pay any attention. That was just Pa talking. We’d walked to church through snow and rain and heat and cold all my life and it didn’t seem likely it would ever be any different. I looked straight out at the snow dancing down. I liked it when the first snow came. Winter was hard, what with the cold coming through the walls of the house—so that you’d only be warm if you sat close to the fire—and traipsing around outside with your shoes wet through to the skin, and your hands red and chilled. But the first snow was always pretty. As soon as it piled up enough we’d get out sleds and go up the hill behind the Bronsons’ house to play Running the Gauntlet. Some of us would go up top with the sleds and come down lickety-split, skidding and sliding this way and that. The rest of us would line up along the way with sticks, and try to tip the sleds over as they came shooting by. I liked it when the first snow came.
    ******
    It snowed right on through the morning, but it began to taper off around noon, when we were all gathered in the church barn eating our dinners, and by the time the second service ended it had stopped snowing. But it had come down hard, and there was a good foot of snow on the ground, and drifts two feet deep in places. We stood out front of the church looking at it, nothing but white on the fields as far as we could see, crisscrossed with stone walls. Here and there was a piece of woods, fat black lines against the snow. Dusk was coming and the color was going out of the world, leaving it all black and white. “I don’t see any point in Annie’s trudging home through his now and turning around tomorrow morning to go through it again to get to the mill,” Ma said. “Why don’t you spend the night at Hetty Brown’s?”
    Well, I liked that idea. But the Browns had already started off for home, so I said good-bye and set off after them, going as quick as I could up the road in hopes of catching up with them. It was getting pretty dark now, but some horses had gone along the road, and a couple of sleighs, as well as people walking, and the snow had got packed down some, and it was easy enough going. Up ahead I could see little bits of light coming from the mills and the lodging houses, and beyond that other bits of light from the houses around the village green. I kept on walking, and by and by I came to where the mill road turned off, to run alongside the creek to the two mills facing each other on the banks.
    Something flashed across my mind, and I stopped walking. I looked down the mill road, taking it all in—the snowy mill road with a couple of lines of footprints going along it, the river black as tar, and the dark mills, silent except for the creaking and groaning of the waterwheels.
    My heart began to beat fast. How much time did I have? The Browns didn’t know I was supposed to be catching up with them. They