“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur.

When the old man had gone he looked out over the yellowing fields with a frank distaste for the level immensity.  Suddenly there rang in his ears the harsh singing of many men:  “Where do we go from here, boys, where do we go from here?” Old Sharon was rooted in the soil; dying there.  But he was still free.  He could wire Leach Belding he was starting—­and start.

* * * * *

About eight o’clock the following night he parked the Can beside the ridge road, and for the first time in his proud career of ownership cursed its infirmities.  It was competent, but no car for a tryst one might not wish to advertise.  When its clamour had been stilled he waited some moments, feeling that a startled countryside must rush to the spot.  Yet no one came, so at last he went furtively through the thinned grove and about clumps of hazel brush, feeling his way, stepping softly, crouching low, until he could make out the stile where it broke the lines of the fence.  The night was clear and the stile was cleanly outlined by starlight.  Beyond the fence was a shadowed mass, first a clump of trees, the outbuildings of the Whipple New Place, the house itself.  There were lights at the back, and once voices came to him, then the thin shatter of glass on stone, followed by laughs from two dissonant throats.  He stood under a tall pine, listening, but no other sound came.  After a while he sat at the foot of the tree.  Crickets chirped and a bat circled through the night.  The scent of the pine from its day-long baking was sharp in his nostrils.  His back tired against the tree, and he eased himself to the cooled grass, face down, his hands crossed under his chin.  He could look up now and see the stile against stars.

He waited.  He had expected to wait.  The little night sounds that composed the night’s silence, his own stillness, his intent watching, put him back to nights when silence was ominous.  Once he found he had stopped breathing to listen to the breathing of the men on each side of him.  He was waiting for the word, and felt for a rifle.  He had to rise to shake off this oppression.  On his feet he laughed softly, being again in Newbern on a fool’s mission.  He lay down hands under his chin, but again the silent watching beset him with the old oppression.  He must be still and strain his eyes ahead.  Presently the word would come, or he would feel the touch of a groping foe.  He half dozed at last from the memory of that other endless fatigue.  He came to himself with a start and raised his head to scan the stile.  The darkness had thickened but the two posts at the ends of the fence were still outlined.  He watched and waited.