For from the benches and the crowded table there rose a wail of infantile despair, so shrill and queerly, pipingly minor, so very manifestly the outpouring of very tiny broken hearts, that it was like a toy wail, almost ludicrous in its imitation of the real thing.
But McGennis did not smile at it. For an instant he stood, and then he turned and closed the door with fumbling fingers, and took the few steps to his horse stumblingly, and climbed heavily into his saddle, and with loose reins rode off to his house and went up to his ssla and sat down there, looking blindly out on Sicaba.
"With loose reins rode off to his house."
The sunset came, brightened, and faded, and passed away, and night shut down over Sicaba, and still he sat there. His muchacho came to light a lamp, and McGennis sent him away. Later his cook came, speaking authoritatively of dinner, and McGennis sent his cook away, too, and sat on in the dark.
At last it was the hour when even Sicaba, for a little while, must seem beautiful to the most hostile critic. It is the hour when the full power of night descends upon the world, when the wind dies away to the merest murmur, and the drone of the surf becomes deep and solemn, and the great yellow stars burn very steadily against the soft velvet of the sky.
When that hour came, McGennis stirred, and stood up suddenly, and laid his hands on the broad sill of his window and looked down at Sicaba and up to the stars. "Of course I'm going to stay," he muttered impatiently, as if Some One had asked him a question. "But it's up to You. You butted into this game, and now You've got to play the cards. Pedro," he called, in quite another voice, "bring a light."
When the light was brought, he sat down at his table and drew pen and paper to him and began to write.
"Donald G. Stewart, C.E.," he wrote, tracing the magic initials with reverent care. McGennis would never write C.E. after his own name, unless some day he did the big, big thing which would lead a college to give him the right, honoris causa. He had not the education, he knew that.