And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, saw that there was a white circle about the boy’s tight mouth as Young Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back to the big notebook open on his knees––a vaguely unpleasant smile that was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.
For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned upward, the roar in the room 83 behind him beating in his ears; then he turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house on the hill––he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.
It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.
The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a light––he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively, although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself erect.
“Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!” he soothed the dancing horse. “Steady, it’s only me, boy!” he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day’s work.
It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily through the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping gurgle over the floor.
Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, he lifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket and raised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the small square mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood and looked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin was splashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, and strangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither the one nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared––stared steadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. And for the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Bolton laughed––laughed with real mirth.
He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As if they could still hear him––the circle about the Tavern stove in the valley below––he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until the heavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like live things.