“Who’s she mean that for?” demanded the Judge, truculently.  “The Cowan boy?”

CHAPTER XX

On a day late in June of 1919 Wilbur Cowan dropped off the noon train that paused at Newbern Center.  He carried the wicker suitcase he had taken away, and wore the same clothes.  He had the casual, incurious look of one who had been for a little trip down the line.  No one about the station heeded him, nor did he notice any one he knew.  There was a new assemblage of station loafers, and none of these recognized him.  Suitcase in hand, his soft hat pulled well down, he walked quickly round the crowd and took a roundabout way through quiet streets to the Penniman place.

The town to his eye had shrunk; buildings were not so high as he remembered them, wide spaces narrower, streets shorter, less thronged.  On his way he met old Mr. Dodwell, muffled about the throat, though the day was hot, walking feebly, planting a stout cane before him.  Mr. Dodwell passed blinking eyes over him, went on, then turned to call back.

“Ain’t that Wilbur Cowan?  How de do, Wilbur?  Ain’t you been away?”

“For a little while,” answered Wilbur.  “Thought I hadn’t seen you for some time.  Hot as blazes, ain’t it?”

He came to the Penniman place at the rear.  The vegetable garden, lying between the red barn and the white house, was as he had known it, uncared for, sad, discouraged.  The judge’s health could be no better.  On bare earth at the corner of the woodshed Frank, the dog, slumbered fitfully in the shade.  He merely grumbled, rising to change his posture, when greeted.  Feebly he sniffed the newcomer.  It could be seen that his memory was stirred, but his eyes told him nothing; he had a complaining air of saying one met so many people.  It was beyond one to place them all.  He whimpered when his ears were rubbed, seeming to recall a familiar touch.  Then with a deep sigh he fell asleep once more.  His master took up the suitcase and gained, without further encounters, the little room in the side-yard house.  Yet he did not linger here.  He kept seeing a small, barefoot boy who rummaged in a treasure box labelled “Cake.”  This boy made him uncomfortable.  He went round to the front of the other house.  On the porch, behind the morning-glory vine, Judge Penniman in his wicker chair languidly fanned himself, studying a thermometer held in his other hand.  He glanced up sharply.

“Well, come back, did you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur, and sat on the top step to fan himself with his hat.  “Warm, isn’t it?”

The judge brightened.

“Warm?  Warm ain’t any name for it!  We been having a hot spell nobody remembers the like of, man nor boy, for twenty years.  Why, day before yesterday—­say, I wish you’d been here!  Talk about suffering!  I was having one of my bad days, and the least little thing I’d do I’d be panting like a tuckered hound.  Say, how was the war?”