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

wouldn’t think anything if I was a little late getting there, for they weren’t expecting me anyway. I took a deep breath, and then I began to trot down the mill road toward the mill. In a minute I came up to the front of the mill. I dashed around the side, heading toward the back. At the corner, right near the long stairs coming down the back, I stopped and looked out. Out back was the mill woodlot. Between the mill and the woodlot was a meadow about a hundred yards across. The meadow was a white blanket. It was untouched, except for a path of footprints running through the snow out to the woodlot. Mr. Hoggart had been out there at least twice, as much as I could tell from the footprints in the dusk.
    I knew I had to get to the Browns’ house soon, or they’d wonder why it had taken so long to come from church. I looked out across the white field with the line of footprints running across it. It was the best chance I’d ever get. So I took another deep breath and began to run across the white field in the moonlight, trying to step in the old footprints as much as I could, so it wouldn’t seem that anybody had followed them.
    I felt naked and scared. It was still light enough so you could see a person against the snow. Mr. Hoggart didn’t live in the mill. He had his own house down the road a ways. But there was no telling where he might be, and if he looked out a window onto the field where I was, he’d know in two seconds who it was running along his footprints.
    I kept on running. The woods came closer. I could see a good ways into them. I ran on, and then I plunged in among the trees. I was a lot safer there. I went in about six steps, stopped, and looked back. There was no sign of a human being, nobody anywhere. I caught my breath, and then I plunged on, following the footprints where they led. Now I was deep in the woodlot. On I went, and within a couple of minutes, I began to see through the trees a shadowy square.
    I slowed down, and then stopped and squinted my eyes to look ahead. It was a shed or a cabin. I began to move forward again, now slipping carefully from tree to tree. In a moment I came to the cabin. It looked like a large tool shed of some kind. There were no windows, and only a small door shut tight. I slipped around behind it. Still no windows, and no windows on the other side either. I guess it had been built as a shed for woodcutters to lock their tools in when they went home at night. You could store a fair amount of wool in it too.
    I stood there, wondering how I could get a look in it to see if there really was wool in it, when I heard a thump, and a bang from inside. I jumped, and then froze still, my heart racing. I listened. There was another thump and a curse. I turned to run, about to head off through the woods by the shortest distance to the road. Just as I put my foot down, I remembered: I’d make a track of footprints as clear as day going out of there. He’d know somebody had been outside while he was in there.
    Should I wait until he left? No, I couldn’t do that, for I’d already made a track of prints all the way around the shack. There was only one thing to do. I began to run off the way I’d come, along the old footprints. And what would happen if he came out right behind me? He wouldn’t be running. He’d be coming along easy; but would he get to the edge of the woods before I got across the field? I began to pray.
    Then I came to the edge of the woods. I turned around to listen. It seemed to me I heard the sound of a door shutting, and a key clinking. I dashed out of the woods into the snowy field, moving my legs as fast as I could go, faster and faster along that line of footprints. The mill came closer; I plunged for it, dove around the corner, and dropped flat into the snow. Then I twisted around and looked back. Mr. Hoggart was just coming out of the woods. I didn’t wait, but ran on down the length of the mill, out