The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker — John Shaqi
The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel BarkerHowells, William Dean
General
The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
Howells, William Dean
Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Poets -- Fiction
Lemuel knew the voice, and turning quickly, he knew the impudent face
it belonged to. He did not mind the laugh raised at his expense, but
launched himself across the intervening spectators, and tried to seize
the scamp who had got his money from him. The scamp had recognised
Lemuel too, and he fell back beyond his grasp, and then lunged through
the crowd, and tore round the corner and up the street. Lemuel followed
as fast as he could. In spite of the weakness he had felt before, wrath
and the sense of wrong lent him speed, and he was gaining in the chase
when he heard a girl's voice, “There goes one of them now!” and then a
man seemed to be calling after him, “Stop, there!” He turned round, and
a policeman, looking gigantic in his belted blue flannel blouse and his
straw helmet, bore down upon the country boy with his club drawn, and
seized him by the collar.
“You come along,” he said.
“I haven't done anything,” said Lemuel, submitting, as he must, and in
his surprise and terror losing the strength his wrath had given him. He
could scarcely drag his feet over the pavement, and the policeman had
almost to carry him at arm's length.
A crowd had gathered about them, and was following Lemuel and
his captor, but they fell back when they reached the steps of the
police-station, and Lemuel was pulled up alone, and pushed in at the
door. He was pushed through another door, and found himself in a kind
of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk
within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose
blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer,
looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed
a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. “What have you got there?” he
asked.
“Assaulting a girl down here, and grabbing her satchel,” said the
officer who had arrested Lemuel, releasing his collar and going to the
door, whence he called, “You come in here, lady,” and a young girl, her
face red with weeping and her hair disordered, came back with him. She
held a crumpled straw hat with the brim torn loose, and in spite of her
disordered looks she was very pretty, with blue eyes flung very wide
open, and rough brown hair, wavy and cut short, almost like a boy's.
This Lemuel saw in the frightened glance they exchanged.
“This the fellow that assaulted you?” asked the man at the desk, nodding
his head toward Lemuel, who tried to speak; but it was like a nightmare;
he could not make any sound.
“There were three of them,” said the girl with hysterical volubility.
“One of them pulled my hat down over my eyes and tore it, and one of
them held me by the elbows behind, and they grabbed my satchel away that
had a book in it that I had just got out of the library. I hadn't got it
more than----”
“What name?” asked the man at the desk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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