Standing at the foot of the stairs, with a lighted candle in his hand, Tim turned suddenly to me and said, “I thought you were going to see Weston.”

“I thought you were sitting at home waiting for me to get back,” I retorted.

“Can I help you upstairs?” he said.

“No, I’m going to sit awhile and smoke,” I answered jauntily, “and talk—­to Captain.”

VII

Tim was leaving the valley.  We tied his tin trunk on the back of the buggy and he climbed to the seat beside me.  Tip Pulsifer handed him a great cylindrical parcel, bound in a newspaper, and my brother held it reverently in his lap; for it was a chocolate cake, six layers high, that Mrs. Tip had baked from the scanty contents of the Pulsifer flour barrel.  Tim was going to the city, and all the city people Mrs. Tip had ever seen were lean, quick-moving and nervous, a condition which she concluded was induced by starvation.  So she had done her best to provide Tim against want.  Her mind was the mind of Six Stars.  All the village was about the buggy.  Josiah Nummler had rowed down from his hill-top, and the bulge in Tim’s pocket was caused by the half dozen fine pippins which the old man had brought as his farewell gift.  Even Theophilus Jones left the store unguarded, and hurried over when the moment arrived that the village was to see the last of its favorite son.  Mrs. Tip Pulsifer is always red about the eyes, and no way was left her to show her emotion but to toss her apron convulsively over her face and swing Cevery wildly to and fro, so that the infant’s cries arose above the chorus of “good-bys” as we drove away.

“Farewell, comrade.”  We heard Aaron Kallaberger’s stentorian tones as we clattered around the bend.  “Head up—­eyes front—­for’a’d!”

Tim turned and waved his hat to the little company at the gate, to all the friends he had ever known, to the best he ever was to know; to Mrs. Bolum and her Isaac, feebly waving the hands that had so often helped him in time of boyish trouble; to Nanny Pulsifer and Tip; to all the worthies of the store.

Tim was off to war.  He was going to take part in a greater battle than I had ever seen, for I had been one of thousands who had marched together on a common enemy.  He was going forth as did Launcelot and Galahad, alone, to meet his enemies at every turn, to be sore pressed, and bruised and wounded; not to be as I was, a part of a machine, but to be the machine and the god in it, too.  How I envied him!  He was going forth to encounter many strange adventures, and while he was in the press, laying about him in all the glory of his strength, fighting his way against a mob, to fame and fortune, I should be dozing life away with Captain.

“Did it feel that way when you left?” said Tim.  He spoke for the first time when we passed the tannery lane, and his voice was a wee bit husky.