At Hanover Junction it was necessary for him to change trains. For a while he sat alone on the edge of a baggage truck, his luggage on the platform at his feet. He smoked and looked up at the sky. There was a moon somewhat past the full, but brown and serrated under the mackerel scales of thin clouds. At the far end of the platform a squad of loafers stood talking. Bale had avoided them purposely. The station itself was deserted except for a night agent who sat in his little den, clicking mysterious jabbers to a mute length of wire.

Presently the agent came out of the station and moved across the hollow wooden platform, a bloody lantern in his hand. A clicking and a thud of metal marked his pause at the switch-post. He came back, carrying the vivid green lantern which he had replaced with the red.

He spoke to Daniel Bale. “Looks like we might catch a little rain, maybe.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Dan.

The agent stood there, weaving the hissing green lantern back and forth. His shape seemed strangely lop-sided in the darkness. Bale bent his head slightly to bring the man’s body into full silhouette against the soft, kerosene yellow of the station windows … The man had only one arm.

“About this time, first part of June,” said the agent, “we generally get a deal of rain around here.”

More abruptly than he had intended, Bale observed, “I see you’re shy one wing.”

The agent’s warm young voice gurgled. He spoke as one who is expecting pity and veneration to be lavished upon him, and who feels that they are wholly his due. “But,” he concluded, “my wife don’t mind a bit. She says she’d rather have me wanting a chunk of meat than not have me at all. And anyways, when you figure how it happened, I guess I’m not sorry. When I signed the roll I figured I might get killed, maybe. I tell you, friend, there’s a good many better men than I be, lying down there by that crick this minute. Bet your boots.”

Bale watched a crumb of tobacco fall from his pipe and slide into the forest of his beard; it bounded from wiry hair to wiry hair, making its own tiny illumination as it went. He thought, Now it’s coming, he’s bound to ask, and I wish—

“You done a turn with the colors?” blurted the agent.

“No.”

The green lantern jerked at the abruptness of the reply. When the agent spoke again, he was halting and apologetic. “Well, I always say that a man’s first duty is to his family. Course I wasn’t married till I come back … You’re married, friend, I take it?”