the street.

The sun hit him a clip in the eyes again that made him sick, and the wind[107] caught at his sleeves, and ran down his collar gleefully. The girl shut the door with a click, and turned the key, eyeing him doubtfully. He seemed to her very stupid for a soldier. If he had given her half a chance, she would have been friendly to him. She watched him drag down the street with an amused contempt, then turned to her belated lunch.

[107]

Lyman Gage walked on down the road a little way, and then began to feel as if he couldn’t stand the cold a second longer, though he knew he must. His heart was behaving queerly, seeming to be absent from his body for whole seconds at a time, and then returning with leaps and bounds that almost suffocated him. He paused and looked around for a place to sit down, and, finding none, dropped down on the frozen ground at the roadside. It occurred to him that he ought to go back now while he was able,[108] for he was fast getting where from sheer weakness he couldn’t walk.

[108]

He rested a moment, and then stumbled up and back toward Little Silverton. Automobiles passed him, and he remembered thinking that, if he weren’t so sick and queer in his head, he would try to stand in the road and stop one, and get them to carry him somewhere. He had often done that in France, or even in this country during the war. But just now it seemed that he couldn’t do that, either. He had set out to prove to Mary Amber that he was a man and a soldier, and holding up automobiles wouldn’t be compatible with that idea. Then he realized that all this was crazy thinking, that Mary Amber had gone to thunder, and so had he, and it didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was for him to get that money and go back and pay Miss Marilla for taking care of him; and then[109] for him to take the next train back to the city, and get to a hospital. If he could only hold out long enough for that. But things were fast getting away from him. His head was hot and in a whirl, and his feet were so cold he thought they must be dead.

[109]

Without realizing it he walked by the telegraph-office and on down the road toward Purling Brook again.

The telegraph-girl watched him from the window of the tiny bakery where she ate her lunch.

“There goes that poor boob now!” she said with her mouthful of pie a la mode. “He gets my goat! I hope 

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