At last he locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went over to the timber claim to smoke a cigar and say goodbye to the place.  There he soberly walked about for more than an hour, under the crooked trees with empty birds’ nests in their forks.  Every time he came to a break in the hedge, he could see the little house, giving itself up so meekly to solitude.  He did not believe that he would ever live there again.  Well, at any rate, the money his father had put into the place would not be lost; he could always get a better tenant for having a comfortable house there.  Several of the boys in the neighbourhood were planning to be married within the year.  The future of the house was safe.  And he?  He stopped short in his walk; his feet had made an uncertain, purposeless trail all over the white ground.  It vexed him to see his own footsteps.  What was it—­what was the matter with him?  Why, at least, could he not stop feeling things, and hoping?  What was there to hope for now?

He heard a sound of distress, and looking back, saw the barn cat, that had been left behind to pick up her living.  She was standing inside the hedge, her jet black fur ruffled against the wet flakes, one paw lifted, mewing miserably.  Claude went over and picked her up.

“What’s the matter, Blackie?  Mice getting scarce in the barn?  Mahailey will say you are bad luck.  Maybe you are, but you can’t help it, can you?” He slipped her into his overcoat pocket.  Later, when he was getting into his car, he tried to dislodge her and put her in a basket, but she clung to her nest in his pocket and dug her claws into the lining.  He laughed.  “Well, if you are bad luck, I guess you are going to stay right with me!”

She looked up at him with startled yellow eyes and did not even mew.

VI

Mrs. Wheeler was afraid that Claude might not find the old place comfortable, after having had a house of his own.  She put her best rocking chair and a reading lamp in his bedroom.  He often sat there all evening, shading his eyes with his hand, pretending to read.  When he stayed downstairs after supper, his mother and Mahailey were grateful.  Besides collecting war pictures, Mahailey now hunted through the old magazines in the attic for pictures of China.  She had marked on her big kitchen calendar the day when Enid would arrive in Hong-Kong.

“Mr. Claude,” she would say as she stood at the sink washing the supper dishes, “it’s broad daylight over where Miss Enid is, ain’t it?  Cause the world’s round, an’ the old sun, he’s a-shinin’ over there for the yaller people.”