“All right,” said Dan. “Put the cloth back. You ought to have some windows open in here.” He tried to open two of the windows but the cases were jammed and solid, painted shut.

“He never know anything for three days. Just right still in his bed, kind of dazed like.”

“All right,” said Dan again. He stood at the double doors and motioned Mrs. Wurke into the hall. Then he shoved the doors together. The front door stood open; he went out upon the narrow gallery and took a few deep breaths. The old woman waited in the lamp-glow of the hallway, chafing her wrists.

Clouds must be thicker overhead … he could see no suggestion of that shop-worn moon, and the long street was a ringing den of tree-toads. The roadway faded into midnight up a long slope where it veered toward Cashtown. Bale felt the buzzing pulsation of train travel still quickening unnaturally within his skin—a steady, draining katabolism which he could not shake off. He was more aware of that than he was of his grandfather’s death, and the fact that he was once more standing on this lead-gray porch, feeling the bushy night of Pennsylvania around him.

He had seen Doctor Duffey and Elijah at the depot—them, and a ragged white horse switching his mane and grunting angrily, rubbing bony flanks against the worn shafts. They had told him. In that moment they were only faces who talked and told him that one portion of his life was ended—the last thong which tied him to his childhood was gnawed and parted … ho, the wars … a captain of the Seventy-second Pennsylvania Volunteers had slumped down in the Fanning carriage at the farther end of the platform and waited for him, moody and uncaring, solely uninterested, while the limping freedman came to gather up Bale’s leather satchel.

Doctor Duffey protested, “No, no! You’ll be coming along with us and not squeeze us a particle. When you get home, Elijah can sit up and keep watch with you awhile.”

“I’d be glad to,” lied Huddlestone.

Bale told them, “I’ll ride with Ty. Or I could walk, for that matter. If Grandfather’s gone, there’s no need for me to hurry any more.”

“Dead for twenty-four hours,” said Duffey.

“I’ll look for you. Get around as soon as you can—” He went riding off with Fanning while the Duffey carryall racked unevenly up the hill behind them. He thought himself a traitor to some ancient cause. It would have been better to crowd those four people and their bundles. Ty said, “One long belly-ache for months … that’s a fact. Inside and out of me, a belly-ache. And no hope in sight. You watch, Dan Bale—one of these times I’ll get killed. I’d rather, too, than go through Antietam again.”

They were only faces who talked, and told him nothing at all.