"Yes."
"Well, get up now, and I'll help you with the horse."
He helped the sullen fellow unhitch the fallen horse, lift him to his feet and readjust the harness. He put shoulder to the wheel and started the wagon again on its way.
He returned to his room feeling better. It was the first fight he had started for months and it stirred his blood to healthy reaction.
He watched the bare limbs swaying in the bitter wind in front of St. George's Church and his eye rested on the steeples the architects said were unsafe and might fall some day with a crash, and his depression slowly returned. He had waked that morning with a vague sense of dread.
"I guess it was that fight!" he muttered. "The scoundrel will be back in an hour with a warrant for my arrest and I'll spend a few days in jail——"
The postman's whistle blew at the basement window. He knew that fellow by the way he started the first notes of his call—always low, swelling into a peculiar shrill crescendo and dying away in a weird cry of pain.
The call this morning was one of startling effects. It was his high nerve tension, of course, that made the difference—perhaps, too, the bitter cold and swirling gusts of wind outside. But the shock was none the less vivid. The whistle began so low it seemed at first the moaning of the wind, the high note rang higher and higher, until it became the shout of a fiend, and died away with a wail of agony wrung from a lost soul.
He shivered at the sound. He would not have been surprised to receive a letter from the dead after that.
He heard some one coming slowly up stairs. It was mammy and the boy. The lazy maid had handed his mail to her, of course.