BETWEEN TWO THIEVES
BY
RICHARD DEHAN
AUTHOR OF “ONE BRAVER THING”
(THE DOP DOCTOR)
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1912, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian
[Pg 1]
BETWEEN TWO THIEVES
I
An old paralytic man, whose snow-white hair fell in long silken wavesfrom under the rim of the black velvet skull-cap he invariably wore,sat in a light invalid chair-carriage at the higher end of the wide,steep street that is the village of Zeiden, in the Canton of Alpenzell,looking at the sunset.
Slowly the rose-red flush was fading behind the glittering green,snow-capped pinnacle of distant Riedi. A segment of the sun’s hugeflaming disk remained in view above a shoulder of her colossal neighborDonatus; molten gold and silver, boiling together as in a crucible,were spilled upon his vast, desolate, icy sides; his towering,snow-crested helmet trailed a panache of dazzling glory,snatched from the sinking forehead of the vanquished Lord of Day, andeven the cap of the Kreinenberg, dwarf esquire in attendance on thegiant, boasted a golden plume.
The old man blinked a little, oppressed by excess of splendor, and theattendant Sister of Charity, who sometimes relieved the white-capped,blue-cloaked, cotton-gowned German nurse customarily in charge of thepatient, observing this, turned the invalid-chair so that its occupantlooked down upon the Blau See, the shape of which suggests a sumptuousglove encrusted with turquoises, as, bordered with old-world, walledtowns, it lies in the rich green lap of a fertile country, deep girdledwith forests of larch and pine and chestnut, enshrining stately ruinsof mediæval castles, and the picturesque garden-villas built by wealthypeasants, in their stately shadow; and sheltered by the toweringgranite ranges of the Paarlberg from raging easterly gales.
The brilliant black eyes that shone almost with the brilliancy ofyouth in the wasted ivory face of the old man in the wheeled chair,sparkled appreciatively now as they looked out over the Lake. For tothe whirring of its[Pg 2] working dynamos, and the droning song of itspropeller, a monoplane of the Blériot type emerged from its woodenshelter, pitched upon a steep green incline near to the water’s edge;and moving on its three widely-placed cycle-wheels with the gait of aleggy winged beetle or a flurried sheldrake, suddenly rose with itsrider into the thin, clear atmosphere, losing all its awkwardness asthe insect or the bird would have done, in the launch upon its naturalelement, and the instinctive act of flight. The old man watched thebird of steel and canvas, soaring and dipping, circling and turning,over the blue liquid plain with the sure ease and swift daring of theswallow, and slowly nodded his head. When the monoplane had