He lit the match, seemed to gather the idea that he had succeeded with the pipe, and sucked at it imaginatively; then started suddenly for the basket girl. “Hi!”
The child stopped and looked at him.
“I gets one end. Tha'sh right.”
She accepted the offer with matter-of-fact gravity, and they moved away over the bridge unsteadily. The glamour of the moon was around them. Hennion heard Shays lift his voice into husky resemblance of a song.
A queer world, with its futilities like Shays, its sad little creeping creatures like the basket girl!
Down the river some distance was the P. and N. Railroad bridge. The west-bound train shot out upon it, a sudden yell, a pursuing rumble, a moving line of lit windows.
Whatever one did, taking pride in it purely as a work, as victory and solution, it was always done at last for the sake of men and women. The west-bound passenger train was the foremost of effectual things. It ran as accurately to its aims in the dark as in the light, with a rhythm of smooth machinery, over spider-web bridges. Compared with the train, the people aboard it were ineffectual. Most of them had—but mixed ideas of their purposes there. But if no passengers had been aboard, the westbound train would have been a silly affair.
Hennion came from the bridge and down Bank Street, which was brilliant with lights. He turned up an outrunning street and came out on the square, where stood Port Argent's city hall and court house and jail, where there was a fountain that sometimes ran, and beds of trimmed foliage plants arranged in misguided colour-designs.
Several lights were burning in the barred windows of the old jail. He stopped and looked at the lights, and wondered what varieties of human beings were there. The jail was another structure which would have been futile without people to go in, at least to dislike going in. The man who shot Wood was there. Why did he shoot Wood? What was his futile idea in that?
The jail was old and dilapidated. Some of the bricks had crumbled under the barred windows.