Achilles paused and looked up—one hand resting lightly on his hip, turned a little back—the other thrust in his breast.
The man’s eyes scanned him through the dimness. “Where you bound for?” he asked curtly.
“I walk,” said Achilles.
“Want a job?” asked the man.
“You got job for me?” asked Achilles. His voice had all the guileless caution of the foreigner astray in a free land. The man moved along on the seat. “Jump up,” he said.
Achilles looked back and forth along the road. “I think I go long,” he said slowly.
The man gave an impatient sound in his throat and clicked to the horses. The heavy wagon creaked into motion, and caught its rhythm and rumbled on.
Achilles’s ears followed it with deepest caution. The creaking mass of sound had passed the flat-spread coat without stop, and gathered itself away into a slow rumble, and passed on in the blurring dark.
Beyond it, the little, low lights still twinkled and the suburb waited with its trailing cars.
But when he lifted the coat she had fallen asleep, her face resting on her arm, and he bent to it tenderly, and listened.