And there, from the shadow of the flowering currant bush, which just now is out of flower and fallen in meditative quiet—a man arose. My sharp fear, as savage a thing as if the world were ten thousand years younger, or as if I were a ptarmigan and he a cougar—was only momentary. For the cougar began to apologize and I recognized him.
"Why," I said, "Peter."
"Yes'm," said he, "I couldn't help being here—for a little while."
"Neither could I, Peter," I told him.
These were remarkable admissions of ours, for a large part of evening in the village is an uninhabitable part of day and, no matter in what splendour of sky it comes, is a thing to be shut outside experience. If we relate being wakened by something that goes bang, we begin it, "In the middle of the night, about twelve o'clock;" and, "They have a light in their house 'most every night till midnight," is a bit of sharp criticism not lightly to be lived down. But now it was as if Peter were a part of the time itself, and outlaw too, if the evening was outlaw. "I'm glad I saw you," Peter said—as if we were here met by chance in the usual manner. "I wanted to see you and tell you: I'm going away—to be gone right along."
"Why," I said again, "Peter!"
"You'd go too," he said simply.
"I should want to go," I told him, "but I doubt if I would go. Where are you going?"
"They want to put in a cannery at Marl. It'd be a branch. I'd run it myself."
I did not miss the implication of the conditional mood. And Marl. What wonderful names they give to some of the towns of this world. That word makes a picture all of white cornices and white wings of buildings and bright façades. I dare say from the railroad track the real town of Marl shows an unpainted livery barn and a blue barber shop, but the name sounds like the name of a chapter of travel, beginning: To-day we drove to Marl to see the queen. Or the cataract. Or the porch of the morning.