“What do you want to go there for?” he asked.
“Well,” said Brecky, laughing, “I suppose because I don’t want to walk around New Chelsea all night in this weather. Three of us started here in a motor, but we broke down a little way up the line, and we couldn’t get our bearings. We each tried a different direction, and I guess I’m the lucky one. Charley will have to turn out with a lantern to find the other fellows.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right!” said the policeman, disarmed. “There’s houses and little settlements all around this part of the country.”
He directed Brecky to the house of Charley Sands. A good walk, about three miles, he should say—uphill, and mighty hard to find in the dark.
“Oh, I’ll find it all right!” said Brecky cheerfully.
V
He very nearly found something else that night. He lost his way entirely. He went on, as in a dream, along muddy roads, up hills so steep that he thought his weary heart would burst. He would not admit his intolerable fatigue, and the frightful ravages made by passion and bitterness. He wished to continue, inexorably, until he had accomplished his object.
The country was unfamiliar and hostile to this denizen of cities. When at last his strength was wholly gone, he did not know where to turn. He dared not wake any of the people in the dark farmhouses he passed. He crept up to a barn once, but a dog drove him away.
At last, at very last, he found an open shed behind a church, used as a shelter for the buggies and the Fords of the worshipers; and he crouched in there, relieved for a time from the unendurable confusion of the dark and the wind. His cigars and matches were dry and safe in an inside pocket, and he began to smoke. He hadn’t the slightest wish to sleep. He didn’t even feel tired. He only wanted to stop for a moment, to secure a pause in his superhuman exertions. He knew very well that if he hadn’t found this refuge, he would have been defeated.
Wide-eyed and reflective, he sat in his corner until he observed that the stormy dark was changing its aspect, that it was growing faintly and drearily gray. It surprised him. He had forgotten that morning was ever coming again. He got up and set out on his way once more.