Crippled as he was, the balance of his journey home seemed long and wearisome. When he passed through the little village of Weston’s Green, he knew he was more than half way. Yet here he must pause in limping pursuit of a cat that scampered under the milk can platform. For five minutes he poked his stick under this refuge for no better reason than to see the cat make a frightened exit. He threw his stick after the startled fugitive and replaced it with a rail which he wrenched out of a picket fence. Having completed this nocturnal assault on the sleeping village, he set forth again along the tracks for Farrelton. It was midnight when he limped into the living room of his home where his stepfather sat beside a marble-topped center table at which he had been reading fitfully during the long hours of waiting. “Well, Hervey,” he said, with a note of discouragement in his voice, “your mother has only just gone to bed; wait here a minute.” He went quietly upstairs and presently returned, closing the door. It seemed to Hervey that this had been to announce his own return to a worried mother. “Well, Hervey, where have you been?” Mr. Walton resumed his seat, speaking not unkindly, but with a look of patient resignation at his stepson. “I was down at Tanner’s Corners,” said Hervey blithely. “I got a hitch there; there was a ball game and, oh bimbo, it wasn’t over till nearly dark--_some game_” “Hmph. Did you go there on account of the game?” “No, I bunked into it.” “Just went there, eh?” “I got a dandy ride. Oh bimbo, I wish we had a car!” Mr. Walton was one of those conservative, old-fashioned men who did not care about a car. “You had no money?” “Nope, I walked the tracks home and I got my foot caught in a switch and believe _me_, I had one narrow escape all right. The switch opened just before a train came along, gee I’m lame yet! Some adventure with the capital A underlined.” “Is your foot cut?” “No, but jimmies, it was pinched--_good night_! It’s getting all right now.” Mr. Walton studied him a few moments and seemed to be debating whether to take a serious view of the mishap. Finally he struck a balance between Hervey’s rattle-brained narrative and the evident facts of the case. “Let me see your foot,” he said. Hervey blithely removed his shoe and Mr. Walton felt of the foot. “See, it’s all right now,” said Hervey, wriggling his toe. “Well, so you walked home.” “Sure, some walk.”