He straightened his shoulders and walked with long, even strides, looking neither to right nor left.
He found Janet waiting in the shadow of the baggage-room doorway. The station was thronged with a shouting, jostling crowd. Taking her arm, he guided her through the gate and assisted her to the platform of the last coach.
"You hold the seat, will you?" he asked. "I want to smoke. We broke training to-night, you know."
She nodded, smiling.
And until the porter's call he paced up and down the long train shed. As the train pulled out he swung himself to the platform of the rear coach and entered.
V
A throng of several hundred awaited the arrival of the train at midnight in the railway yards. At the first shriek of the whistle away beyond the bend of the river the cheering commenced. It gathered force sufficiently to smother completely the pounding of the great engine as it thundered past the trim little station and came to a grinding stop.
In the crowd that packed the platform the old men were as eager as the lads; and there were not a few such old men with white in their hair and lined faces, that the lights of the station made radiant. Professors were there, eagerly jostling, squirming, edging in the crowd, holding their own in the tight-squeezed mass with elbows every whit as pointed as the elbows of the youngsters that the youngsters thrust into their sides.
The crowd discovered at once that the team was in the second coach and before a man of the eleven had reached the platform the car was surrounded.
Late as was the hour, speeches were demanded, nor was a path opened through the throng until the demand had been acceded to. A circle formed around the band and its brassy noise blared out upon the night until every townsman within range of the farthest-carrying horn flung up his window and poked a head wonderingly into the outer darkness.