He could not quite understand the sensation which the boy’s absence waked in him at that instant. Days afterward he knew it had been lonesomeness––a rather bewildering loneliness––for no matter what his reception chanced to be along the way, Young Denny’s greeting had been infallibly regular.
And another emotion far less difficult to understand began to stir within him as he sat motionless for a time scanning the shapeless bulk of the place, entirely dark save for a single light in the rear room. For the first time he saw how utterly apart from 121 the rest of the town those unpainted old farm buildings were––how utterly isolated. The twinkling lights of the village were mere pin-points in the distance. Each thick shadow beneath the eaves of the house was blacker than he had ever noticed before. Even the soft swish of the rain as it seeped from the sodden shingles, even the very familiar complaint of loose nails lifted by the wind under the clapboards, set his heart pumping faster. All in an instant his sensation-hungry old brain seized upon each detail that was as old as he himself and manufactured, right there on the spot, a sinister something––a something of unaccountable dread, which sent a delightful shiver up and down his thin, bony, old back.
For a while he waited and debated with himself, not at all certain now that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cut which had adorned Young Denny’s chin as he had been. And yet, even while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom––pride in the contemplation of his own intrepid dare-deviltry.
He could scarcely have put into words just what reception he had imagined was awaiting him; but, 122 whatever it might have been, Young Denny’s greeting was full as startling. A worn, dusty, shapeless leather bag stood agape upon the table before the window, and Denny Bolton paused over the half-folded garment in his hands to wheel sharply toward the newcomer as the door creaked open.
For one uncomfortable moment the old adventurer waited in vain for any light of welcome, or even recognition, to flash up in the boy’s steady scrutiny. Then the vaguest of smiles began to twitch at the corners of Denny’s lips. He laid the coat back upon the table and stepped forward a pace.
“Hello!––Here at last, are you?” he saluted. “Aren’t you pretty late tonight?”
Old Jerry swallowed hard at the cheery ease of the words, but his fluttery heart began to pump even faster than when he had sat outside in the buggy debating the advisability of his further advance. That warning premonition had not been a footless thing, after all, for this self-certain, vaguely amused person who stood steadily contemplating him was not the Denny Bolton he had known twenty-four hours before––not from any angle or viewpoint.
Behind the simulated cheer of his greeting there was something else which Old Jerry found disturbingly new and hard to place. In his perplexity the wordless accusation that morning had been correct at that. And Young Denny was smiling widely at him 123 now––smiling openly. The old man shuffled his feet and shifted his gaze from the open wound upon the boy’s face as though he feared his suspicion might be read in his eyes. Then he answered Denny’s question.
“I––I cal’late I be late––maybe a little,” he admitted.
Denny nodded briskly.