A wave of sadness swept him. The warm wind off the river seemed cooler. The sun lost some of its warmth. He had never felt so alone. Then he forced himself to face it. How many times had he exclaimed: "_If only I could come back one hundred years from now._" Well, here he was, with sixty-one years for good measure. A white object bounded across the grass toward him. Instinctively Ephraim caught it and found it was the hard white sphere being used by the boys playing at ball. "All the way," one of them yelled. Ephraim cocked his arm and threw. The sphere sped like a rifle ball toward the target of the most distant glove, some seventeen rods away. "Wow!" the youth to whom he had spoken admired. The young voice was so shocked with awe Ephraim had an uneasy feeling the boy was about to genuflect. "Gee. Get a load of that whip. The guy's got an arm like Joe DiMaggio...." * * * * * Supper was good but over before Ephraim had barely got started. Either the American stomach had shrunk or Gertie and her brother, despite their seeming affluence, were among the very poor. There had only been two vegetables, one meat, no fowl or venison, no hoe cakes, no mead or small ale or rum, and only one pie and one cake for the three of them. He sat, still hungry, in the parlor thinking of Martha's ample board and generous bed, realizing she, too, must be dust. There was no use in returning to Middlesex. It would be as strange and terrifying as New York. Benny offered him a small paper spill of tobacco. "Sis tells me ya was in the Army. What outfit was ya with?" Before Ephraim could tell him, he continued, "Me, I was one of the bastards of Bastogne." He dug a thumb into Ephraim's ribs. "Pretty hot, huh, what Tony McAuliffe tells the Krauts when they think they got us where the hair is short and want we should surrender." "What did he tell them?" Ephraim asked politely. Benny looked at him suspiciously. "'Nuts!' he tol' 'em. 'Nuts.' Ya sure ya was in the Army, chum?" Ephraim said he was certain. "E.T.O. or Pacific?" "Around here," Ephraim said. "You know, Germantown, Monmouth, King's Mountain." "Oh. State's side, huh?" Benny promptly lost all interest in his sister's guest. Putting his hat on the back of his head he announced his bloody intention of going down to the corner and shooting one of the smaller Kelly Pools. "Have a good time," Gertie told him. Sitting down beside Ephraim she fiddled with the knobs on an ornate commode and a diminutive mule-skinner appeared out of nowhere cracking a bull whip and shouting something almost unintelligible about having a Bible in his pack for the Reverend Mr. Black. Ephraim shied away from the commode, wide-eyed. Gertie fiddled with the knobs again and the little man went away. "Ya don't like television, huh?" She moved a little closer to him. "Ya want we should just sit and talk?"