"Possibly I ain't. Possibly I ain't," grudgingly confessed Eleazer. "Travelin' ain't all there is to life, though. I'm observin', I am. I understand human nature. This Heath feller, now. I understand him."
"Then p'raps you can foretell what he's likely to do when I arrest him," put in Elisha eagerly.
"I can," Eleazer nodded. "I can prophesy just about what he'll do."
"It's better I shouldn't tell you. 'Twouldn't be wise. We must do our duty no matter what comes of it."
Again Elisha's knees weakened beneath him.
"Seems to me," went on Eleazer, "that 'stead of loiterin' here discussin' the calamities of the future you'd better be gettin' on to your house. You've got to put on your other clothes. The press, most likely, will want to photograph you. Then you must hunt up your badge, your handcuffs an' all your paraphernalia. I'd better cut across the field, meantime, an' oil up my pistol. Mebbe I can fix it so'st it'll go off. I'll try an' find you some cartridges, too. I wouldn't want to stand by an' see you struck down without your havin' some slight defense, poor as 'tis."
With this dubious farewell, Eleazer bustled off across the dingle and was lost to sight.
Left alone, Elisha gloomily pursued his way to his own cottage and entering it by the side door passed through the back hall and upstairs.
From the shed he could hear May Ellen, his housekeeper, singing lustily as she mopped the floor to the refrain of _Smile, Smile, Smile_.
The sentiment jarred on him. He could not smile.
Going to the closet, he took out his Sunday suit, shook it, and with the air of one making ready his shroud, spread it upon the bed. It exhaled a pungent, funereal mustiness, particularly disagreeable at the moment.
Next he produced a boiled shirt, a collar, and a black tie.
It took him some time to assemble these infrequently used accessories, and he was dismayed to find no collar-button.
Nervously he searched the drawers, tossing their contents upside down in fruitless quest for this indispensable article.
A collar-button was the corner-stone of his toilet--the object on which everything else depended. Should it fail to be forthcoming, the game was up. He could not administer the law without it.
Perhaps, viewing the matter from every angle, its disappearance was a fortunate, rather than an unfortunate, omen.