Page:O Henry Prize Stories of 1924.djvu/248

214 leave you through. Skedaddle, my boys; clear out o’ here!”

If there is one there are a dozen retorts, just at their scandalized lips; arrogant laughter, withering old quarter-deck oaths. Dumbly, though sending down a whispering lace of sand, like autumnal spiders, they flee as they are told, not knowing why. They get off the cliff, their own cliff, not knowing how; a lichenous ground is underfoot, then a streak half clay, then ruts. A wind, a slow draft redolent of clam and weed, bears them along; an air familiar as the years of their youth, turned secret and queer. It bears them into the mouth of a hollow floored with blackness and roofed with stars. Sergeant Belkar Soblievski of the State Police snaps on the headlight of his motor-cycle and examines them with his yellow cornucopia of flame.

“You’re out late, my friends.” Then, not meaning the light-blistered couple to stand there all night, he says in a kindlier tone: “Go right on, the way you were going, my fathers, and keep your mouths shut, and no harm done. Good-night.”

It is some moments before he snaps off the snooping light. Behind Isaiah and Andy, across the wheel-track to the Eden of their ancestral Cove, the ray hangs horizontal, like a lazy angel’s flaming sword.

Here come the willows out of the hill. There’s a moon somewhere under the eastern ocean, and its foreglow, refracting from the zenith, describes with faint silver the slopes of the roof, the two fat chimneys, the fence.

So it’s home they’re coming, after all.

Their boots drag; soul and body they’re beat, the pair of them, dead beat.

The house opens and swallows them. No need of a lamp; they can find their beds in the dark. Mind the table, Isaiah. Take care of that swayed door; it’s got to be fixed, no two ways. Here’s the chair for Andy, and here’s the chair for Isaiah, to drape their coats and trousers over, their shirts and drawers.

There’s nothing left but sleep, then. Sound sleep. Sweet dreams.

Isaiah, the youngster of the two, lies on his back, toes up, wide awake. Andy, across the room, lies toes up, too, count-