At his own gate, Duffey creaked to the ground and went up to the porch. A light, inside: Elijah heard the crackle of Eva Duffey’s newspaper … She had sewn a dozen pairs of mittens for the doctor, out of clean white flannel, to permit the use of his hands. He had four pairs, now, in a damp and bloody bundle under his arm … Elijah leaned out from beneath the carryall top and looked at the stars. It was a perfect night, not too warm or humid. The Milky Way was a sugary mass.

Adam Duffey called from the front door, “He’s no worse, praise Peter. Eva hasn’t heard a speck of news, but no doubt we’ll hear before dawn. Will you sleep on the sofa?”

“I’ll drive home first and tell Ma,” said Elijah.

Mrs. Duffey called, “That sofa’s hard as the Rock of Ages. You go to bed in Aunt Alice’s room, Elijah.” Aunt Alice was the doctor’s relative, who had lived and died with the Duffeys long before.

“Oh, the sofa’s all right,” he told them. “I’ll put old Salt up, and then come in.”

“Did he have plenty of feed at Bearmans’?”

“Too much,” Huddlestone said.

He drove around the square, slapping Salt into an unhappy trot for part of the distance. In front of his own home he dropped a halter hitch around the painted wooden post, studded all over with rusty nail-heads, and went up a path between worm-eaten rose bushes. The whole yard smelled too precious and too sweet; he thought of Pentland Bale’s funeral.

His mother slept in the one room on the second story, a wide, low-ceiled place with a boxed stairway leading to it. Elijah lit a candle after he had closed the front door, and moved to the stair door. “Ma,” he called to the little woman above.

There was a muffled sigh as she roused herself. “Lijy?” she asked.

“Doc wants me to sleep over there.”

“Is somebody dangerous?”

“I guess old Peter Kaufman is pretty sick … They’ve got a new girl at the Bearmans’. We just drove in from there.”

“Which Bearmans? She-that-was-a-Bittner?”

“No, the ones out on the Newville road. Carl, it is.” He swallowed, wet his lips, and then asked, “You haven’t heard any news? War news, I mean.”

She echoed, “War news,” mouthing the words because she had removed her false teeth. “No, Lijy. Why?”

“Oh,” he said.

“Get you a clean night-shirt. There’s two fresh-ironed in the kitchen. And be careful you don’t drive too fast. I don’t like that old Salt,” she added sleepily to herself.