There was no train until the next day. Heston quieted him during the evening with a stiff drink of gin manufactured from alcohol taken from the medical laboratory. Eugene was silent and babbled incoherently by starts: he asked the medical student a hundred questions about the progress and action of the disease.
“If it were double pneumonia she would have said so. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? Hey?” he demanded feverishly.
“I should think so,” said Heston. He was a kind and quiet boy.
Eugene went to Exeter the next morning to catch the train. All through a dreary gray afternoon it pounded across the sodden State. Then, there was a change and a terrible wait of several hours at a junction. Finally, as dark came, he was being borne again toward the hills.
Within his berth he lay with hot sleepless eyes, staring out at the black mass of the earth, the bulk of the hills. Finally, in the hours after midnight, he dropped into a nervous doze. He was wakened by the clatter of the trucks as they began to enter the Altamont yards. Dazed, half-dressed, he was roused by the grinding halt, and a moment later was looking out through the curtains into the grave faces of Luke and Hugh Barton.
“Ben’s very sick,” said Hugh Barton.
Eugene pulled on his shoes and dropped to the floor, stuffing his collar and tie into a coat pocket.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m ready.”
They went softly down the aisle, amid the long dark snores of the sleepers. As they walked through the empty station toward Hugh Barton’s car, Eugene said to the sailor:
“When did you get home, Luke?”
“I came in last night,” he said. “I’ve been here only a few hours.”
It was half-past three in the morning. The ugly station settlement
