His figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness.

"How many do you want?" he said.

"A dozen," she said. "And holders too, if you can get them," she
added, with barren bitterness.

"Yes--all right," he turned and melted into the darkness. She went
indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame.

He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed
its lights under the night. The country ran away, rising on his right
hand. It was no longer a great bank of darkness. Lights twinkled
freely here and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time
restrictions were removed. It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-
heads glittering far-off with electricity. Neither was it the black
gulf of the war darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling.

Everybody seemed to be out of doors. The hollow dark countryside
re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices.
Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the
air. There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional,
a neurasthenic haste for excitement.

Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night,
Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson. People carrying parcels, children,
women, thronged home on the dark paths. They were all talking loudly,
declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what
this or the other had lost.