Out of the wood, Nicholas came on the highway again, and turned to where the afterglow burnished the windows of Kingsborough. He followed the road instinctively--as he had followed it daily from his childhood up, beating out the impression of his own footsteps in the dust, obliterating his old, even tracks by the reckless tramp of his delirium. When he reached the college grounds he paused from the same dazed impulse and looked back upon the west through the quiet archway of the long brick building. The place was desolate with the desolation of autumn. Through the funereal arch he saw the sunset barred by a network of naked branches, while about him the darkening lawn was veiled with the melancholy drift of the leaves. The only sound of life came from a brood of turkeys settling to roost in a shivering aspen. He turned and walked rapidly up the main street, where a cloud of dust hung suspended. Past the court-house, across the green, past the little whitewashed gaol, where in a happier season roses bloomed--out into the open country where the battlefields were grim with headless corn rows--he walked until he could walk no further, and then wheeled about to retrace heavily his way. His rage was spent; his pulses faltered from fatigue, and the red flashes faded from before his eyes. When he reached home supper was over, and Nannie sat sewing in the little room adjoining the kitchen. "You're late for supper," she said idly as he entered. "Sairy Jane's gone to bed with a headache and ma's in a temper. I'll get you something as soon as I've done this seam." "I've had supper," he answered shortly, adding from force of habit, "where's ma?" Nannie motioned towards the kitchen and drew a little nearer the lamp, while Nicholas left the room in search of his stepmother. Marthy Burr, a pile of newly dug potatoes on the floor beside her, was carefully sorting them before storing them for winter use. The sound ones she laid in a basket at her right hand, those that were of imperfect growth or showed signs of decay she threw into a hamper that was kept in the kitchen closet. "You ought to make Jubal do this," said Nicholas as he entered. "I wouldn't trust the thickest skinned potato in the field in his hands," returned Marthy sharply. "He an' yo' pa made out to store 'em last year, an' when I went to look in the first barrel, the last one of 'em had rotted." "Let them rot," said Nicholas harshly. "I be damned if I'd care. You don't eat them, anyway." "I reckon if I was a man I might consarn myself 'bout the things that tickle my own palate--an' 'taters ain't one of 'em," was his stepmother's retort. "But, being a woman, it seems I've got to spend my life slavin' for other folks' stomachs. But you're yo' Uncle Nick Sales all over again; 'Don't you get up befo' day to set that dough, Marthy,' he'd say, but when the bread came on flat as a pancake, he'd look sourer than all the rest."