At the door he was visited with an unusual thoughtfulness. He stuck his
head back in the room to say:

"Oh, yes, Saxy, I _might_ not be home till morning. I _might_
stay all night some place."

He was going without further explanation, but her dismay as she
murmured pathetically:

"But to-morrow is the Sabbath, Willie--!" halted him once more.

"Oh, I'll be home time fer Sunday-school," he promised gaily, and was
off down the road in the darkness, his old wheel squeaking
rheumatically with each revolution growing fainter and fainter in the
night.

But Billy did not take the road to the Junction in his rapid flight.
Instead he climbed the left hand mountain road that met the Forks and
led to the great Highway. Slower and slower the old wheel went, Billy
puffing and bending low, till finally he had to dismount and put a drop
of oil in a well known spot which his finger found in the dark, from
the little can he carried in his pocket for such a time of need. He did
not care to proclaim his coming as he crept up the rough steep way. And
once when a tin Lizzie swept down upon him, he ducked and dropped into
the fringe of alders at the wayside until it was past. Was that, could
it have been Cart? It didn't look like Cart's car, but it was very
dark, and the man had not dimmed his lights. It was blinding. He hoped
it was Cart, and that he had gone to the parsonage. Somehow he liked to
think of those two together. It made his own view of life seem
stronger. So he slunk quietly up to the fork where the Highway swept