The doctor pushed against the door with the toe of his scuffed shoe. He turned around and looked at Dan again. Fresh sunlight dashed in a long slant through the windows and matted over his sagging, pulpy face. “Well, my boy,” he said. “Pentland Bale is gone. May he rest easy. A good man, and many a worry you gave him.”

“Not the last seven years.”

“Don’t fizz up so willingly. Where’s all your fine philosophies? In books—in books you ain’t never written.”

“I dreamed about him all night,” said Dan.

Duffey nodded solemnly. “It’s an unsettled world we’re living in. The ghosts are uneasy, and not to be blamed for it. You used to laugh at my banshees.”

“I’d still laugh at them, and it gave me satisfaction.” Dan pushed hairy legs from beneath the bedclothing, and dropped his feet to the floor. He yawned, and shook his head.

“Very well. Laugh. But I saw Ike Herriott. I saw him die, and I woke up in a faint.”

Bale grunted, scratching sleepily at his knees.

“You don’t believe me,” Duffey accused him. He sat down in a rush-bottom chair, spreading his short legs apart and dumping the bandaged hands into his lap. He wore a frayed coat of heavy black broadcloth and a waistcoat with scarlet and white poppies climbing over it on a gold-threaded vine. The rims of his pockets were frayed into a pasty fuzz; ancient saturations of food and medicine had left their pattern upon his clothing. You felt that he had been placed in those clothes at maturity, and whatever genial chemistry transpired within him had stained its evidence on the loose shell of his garments. The big, square thumbs were nervous, twitching things; his deep-set eyes were dreamy globes of cobalt. He had a vast and ill-conducted practice, concerning which he kept no books or records of any sort. People came from Harrisburg to consult him—from York, from Carlisle. And forever he was very poor, and eternally he owed a butcher’s bill.

He pulled the wrinkled brown lids over his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. “It was like this, my boy. I felt very much a part of young Isaac. He was the smartest neophyte who ever wielded a scalpel under my direction. His folks in New Jersey were big folks—good people, and grand. Well, said I, take my blessing along of theirs, and go into those new lands so far away, and never forget to tell people to raise tomatoes in their gardens.”

“Are you still tomato crazy?” asked Dan.