flat foot so rudely on the brake that the car halted with a jarring shuddering thud. They had just passed a road of unpaved clay which led off from the mountain road towards the right, and towards a farmhouse and a light or two which were clearly visible.
Now, looking nervously and uncertainly toward this house, Luke muttered, almost to himself, thrusting his hand through his hair with a distracted movement as he spoke: “Wy-wy-wy-I fink we could g-g-g-get a drink in here wy—if you’d like one. Wy-wy-I know the old fellow who lives there… he’s a moonshiner—wy-wy-I fink—would you like to stop?” he said abruptly and then, getting no answer from the younger one, he gave another worried and uncertain look in the direction of the house, thrust his fingers through his hair, and muttered to himself: “W-w-w-well, perhaps you’re right—maybe it’s j-j-j-just as well if we g-g-g-get home wy-wy-wy-I guess that Mama will be waiting up for us.”
When they reached town the hour was late, the streets had a wintry, barren, and deserted look, and the lights burned dim: from time to time another motor car would flash by them speedily, but they saw few people. As they drove across the Square it seemed almost to have been frozen in a cataleptic silence, the bulbous clusters of the street lamps around the Square burned with a hard and barren radiance—a ghastly mocking of life, of metropolitan gaiety, in a desert scene from which all life had by some pestilence or catastrophe of nature been extinguished. The fountain in the Square pulsed with a cold breezeless jet, and behind the greasy windows of a luncheon room he could see a man in a dim light seated on a stool and drinking coffee, and the swart muscular Greek leaned over the counter, his furrowed inch of brow painfully bent upon the columns of a newspaper.
As they turned into the street where stood his mother’s house, and sloped swiftly down the hill toward home, his brother, in a tone that tried in vain to be matter of fact and to conceal the concern and pain which his own generous spirit felt because of the feeling of defeat, failure, and desperation which was now legible in every word and gesture of the younger one, began to speak to him in a nervous, almost pleading voice:
“N-n-now I fink,” he began, thrusting his big hand through his hair, —“I—wy I fink when we get home wy—I just wouldn’t say anything to Mama about—wy-wy about that trouble—wy—that we had in Blackstone—wy—at all!” he blurted out. “Wy—f-f-f-frankly, I mean it!” he continued earnestly, as he brought the car to a jolting halt before the house. “
