Joe had left the road-camp and tramped three miles into town. In the dusk he had come upon it unawares; it seemed quite deserted. Very quietly he had come through the back lanes, and now it lay before him, its heart open in a sort of whispered confidence. Crude, inert, makeshift sort of place it might betray itself to be in daylight, it now lay snug and warm and breathing in its cluster of trees. It had gathered its brood to it, its warm lights blinking red, and above, clear liquid moonlight. Joe walked along slowly, an outsider, and yet feeling himself slipping somehow into the warmth and protection of the street. The odour of the burning leaves was heady, a superdistillate of memories. October and moonlight and burning leaves! It meant nuts and wine-sap apples, lingering in the dusk, watching the bull-bats rise. It meant hot supper and a ravenous appetite and a slow roasting before an open fire. Sharp little pictures flashed before his eyes as he walked along, and he fancied he could hear the soft crunch of buggy wheels in the dried leaves and the pad-pad of hoofs. It all seemed wrapped up in the same parcel with his childhood, stored away somewhere in musty archives. You couldn't pull out one without stirring up all the others. He half closed his eyes and peered through his lashes down a sharp black line of roofs like a knife edge against a liquid, shimmering sky, down a broad ghostly band of silver white that was the road, all flecked and mottled with leaf shadows that moved slowly to and fro. He paused a moment. He scarcely dared breathe lest the whole thing vanish. A fairy touch on his arm, light as thistle-down, a subtle sense of warmth and a dim, intangible fragrance, and he started, blinking, and then walked on. Something was dry and dusty in his throat. "Golly, the old place sorta gets next to you on a night like this," he thought. "Guess I'd better get in. They'll think I'm nuts, mooning around on the street all night." He came to a long stretch of wooden picket fence, beyond it a silver plaque of moon-splashed grass, the house all hollow-eyed and gaunt, like a thing watching. As he approached the gate a man came hurrying out, his head hunched forward on his shoulders. Joe stood aside to let him pass. The man peered sharply at him from under his hat brim, grunted, and then passed on. It was Mr. Burrus. Joe had a sense of being too late. Over the house hung the stillness of death, and a thing like Burrus leaving! It was an ugly thought. He walked up to the porch and knocked softly on the door. A moment's silence and then it slowly opened. Someone stood in the doorway. A voice said, "Well?" in a low vibrant tone. There was blended in it the soft mistiness of the night, something of regret, something of purple shadows, something of stirring memories. He moistened his lips with his tongue. "Is it you?" the voice went on, and then Mary Louise came out. "I just heard to-day that Miss Susie had had another spell," he explained.