He got to the door of the livery barn at eleven o'clock and Barney
Smithfield with young Duke Yetter and two other men sat talking there.
The liveryman took his horse away into the darkness of the barn and the
doctor stood for a moment leaning against the wall of the building. The
town's night watchman stood with the group by the barn door and a
quarrel broke out between him and Duke Yetter, but the doctor did not
hear the hot words that flew back and forth or Duke's loud laughter at
the night watchman's anger. A queer hesitating mood had taken
possession of him.

There was something he passionately desired to do but could not
remember. Did it have to do with his wife Ellen or Mary his daughter?
The figures of the two women were again confused in his mind and to add
to the confusion there was a third figure, that of the woman he had
just assisted through child birth. Everything was confusion. He started
across the street toward the entrance of the stairway leading to his
office and then stopped in the road and stared about. Barney Smithfield
having returned from putting his horse in the stall shut the door of
the barn and a hanging lantern over the door swung back and forth. It
threw grotesque dancing shadows down over the faces and forms of the
men standing and quarreling beside the wall of the barn.

* * * * *

Mary sat by a window in the doctor's office awaiting his return. So
absorbed was she in her own thoughts that she was unconscious of the
voice of Duke Yetter talking with the men in the street.

When Duke had come into the street the hot anger of the early part of