Charley boarded a Lafayette avenue car, but displayed an inclination to remain out on the back platform. This was a poser for Evan, but he managed with several others to crowd on the front end, which is against the rules. He found a little seat in the corner of the motorman's vestibule, where he sat down in the dark. Looking back through the car he could make out a square of Charley's striped coat through one of the rear windows. He kept his eye on that.
Charley rode clear to the end of the line at Featherbed lane. Evan, by lingering to ask the motorman a question as to his supposed direction, let him get away from the car. Eight people got off at this point. Five waited at the transverse tracks for the Yonkers car, while three, of whom Evan and Charley were two, crossed the tracks and kept on heading North by the automobile highway. They were at the extreme edge of the town in this direction. The last electric lights were behind them; only a house or two remained alongside the road, then tall woods and darkness.
There was no sidewalk; they proceeded up the middle of the road, first Charley, then the suburbanite, then Evan. Charley frequently looked over his shoulder, the pale patch of his face revealed in the receding lights. But Evan kept on boldly, confident that he could not be recognised with the lights at his back. The suburbanite turned in at one of the houses; Charley was presently swallowed by the shadow of the woods. Evan made believe to turn in at the last house, but dropped in the ditch, and crept along until he, too, gained the woods.
Running in the soft stuff at the side, pausing to listen, and running ahead again, Evan continued to follow Charley by the sound of his nervous steps on the hard road. The road turned slightly, and the lights behind them passed out of sight. The tall trees pressed close on either hand, and it was as dark below as in a cavern.
The steps ceased. Evan paused, listening. Had Charley stopped, or had he, too, taken to the soft stuff? They re-commenced, grew louder, he was coming back! Evan hastily withdrew close under the bushes at the side. Charley passed him at five yards distance. In the stillness Evan could even hear his agitated breathing. In a queer way Evan felt for him. It was no joke to fancy one's self followed on such a road at such an hour. He showed pluck in thus boldly venturing back.
Evan was obliged to take into account the possibility that this whole excursion up the dark road might be a feint. He dared not let Charley out of sight and hearing. He followed him back to the turn in the road, still creeping in the soft stuff. From this point Charley's figure was outlined against the twinkling lights of the trolley terminus, and Evan waited to see what he would do.
Charley went back to the edge of the woods: stopped, listened, walked back and forth a few times, then returned towards Evan, but now, like the other man, taking care to muffle his steps in the grass alongside. Evan could only see him at moments now. He was on Evan's side of the road. Evan drew back under a thick bush.
Charley came creeping along, bent almost double with the primordial instinct of concealment. He paused to listen so close to Evan that the latter, squatting under his bush, could have reached out and touched Charley's foot. Evan breathed from the top of his lungs, wondering that the beating of his heart did not betray him. He heard Charley's breath come in uneven little jerks.
For seconds Charley stood there. Was it possible he knew an enemy was near? Evan could make out his head turning this way and that. The tension was hard on nerves. Though he lay as still as a snake it seemed incredible to Evan that Charley did not feel his nearness.
Finally he went on, and a soft, blessed breath of relief escaped Evan.