Am I going to die?
Do I look sick, Coker?” he said in a hoarse mutter.
“No, son,” said Coker.
“Not sick — crazy.”
Horse Hines took his seat at the other end of the counter.
Eugene, leaning upon the greasy marble counter, began to sing:
“Hey, ho, the carrion crow,
Derry, derry, derry, derr — oh!”
“Shut up, you damn fool!” said the sailor in a hoarse whisper, grinning.
“A carrion crow sat on a rock,
Derry, derry, derry, derr — oh!”
Outside, in the young gray light, there was a brisk wakening of life.
A street-car curved slowly into the avenue, the motorman leaning from his window and shifting the switch carefully with a long rod, blowing the warm fog of his breath into the chill air.
Patrolman Leslie Roberts, sallow and liverish, slouched by an?mically, swinging his club.
The negro man-of-all-work for Wood’s Pharmacy walked briskly into the post-office to collect the morning mail.
J.
T.
Stearns, the railway passenger-agent, waited on the curb across the street for the depot car.
He had a red face, and he was reading the morning paper.
“There they go!” Eugene cried suddenly.
“As if they didn’t know about it!”
“Luke,” said Harry Tugman, looking up from his paper, “I was certainly sorry to hear about Ben.
He was one fine boy.”
Then he went back to his sheet.
“By God!” said Eugene.
“This is news!”
He burst into a fit of laughter, gasping and uncontrollable, which came from him with savage violence.
Horse Hines glanced craftily up at him.
Then he went back to his paper.
The two young men left the lunch-room and walked homeward through the brisk morning.
Eugene’s mind kept fumbling with little things.
There was a frosty snap and clatter of life upon the streets, the lean rattle of wheels, the creak of blinds, a cold rose-tint of pearled sky.
In the Square, the motormen stood about among their cars, in loud foggy gossip.
At Dixieland, there was an air of exhaustion, of nervous depletion.
The house slept; Eliza alone was stirring, but she had a smart fire crackling in the range, and was full of business.
“You children go and sleep now.
We’ve all got work to do later in the day.”
Luke and Eugene went into the big dining-room which Eliza had converted into a bed-room.
“D-d-d-damn if I’m going to sleep upstairs,” said the sailor angrily.
“Not after this!”
“Pshaw!” said Eliza.
“That’s only superstition.
It wouldn’t bother me a bit.”
The brothers slept heavily until past noon.
Then they went out again to see Horse Hines.
They found him with his legs comfortably disposed on the desk of his dark little office, with its odor of weeping ferns, and incense, and old carnations.
He got up quickly as they entered, with a starchy crackle of his hard boiled shirt, and a solemn rustle of his black garments.
Then he began to speak to them in a hushed voice, bending forward slightly.
How like Death this man is (thought Eugene).
He thought of the awful mysteries of burial — the dark ghoul-ritual, the obscene communion with the dead, touched with some black and foul witch-magic.