Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/138

 mobile. Purr of its engine, and repeated clankety-clank of a broken tire chain against one of its mudguards. They still listened. "If it goes by—" Jock thought tensely. "If it goes by—" Afterward he recalled that they might have looked out of the window, but at the time this did not occur to either of them.

"He's turnin' in," breathed Eunice. "It must be Brad."

Then relief so poignant that it was pain ran all through Jock, and his forehead was wet with beads of sudden perspiration. He dropped into a chair, and for the first time he spoke the Thing that had moaned to him in the wind and chattered at him from the tree branches. "I thought he was dead," he said. "Christ! I thought he was dead."

Eunice stood still, and he could feel her eyes. He glanced up. She was looking at him oddly, inquisitively, as though there was something there she could not understand. "Oh, but you adoah him, don't you," she murmured.

And then Brad came in.

He wore an old brown overcoat, frayed at the cuffs, and his hat was the battered felt that Jock remembered as far back as freshman year. His hands were bare and crimson with cold, and they hung at his sides limply. His whole body seemed limp. And his face.. . . You shuddered away from the sight of it. Face of a man haunted, with eyes that saw things where there were no things. . ..

"Why, Brad—" Jock stammered.

Brad had apparently not perceived that anyone was there. At the sound of Jock's voice his chin jerked up, and for a few seconds he was the old Brad, cordial and carefree. "Hello there, Jock! Mighty good to