afternoon"; and it was wholly like Quain that he should have accepted
the statement at its face value, regardless of the date line.

"I _can_ leave my things here for a little while, I presume?" Amber
suggested after a pause.

The ticket-agent stared stubbornly into the infinite, making no sign
till a coin rang on the window-ledge; when he started, eyed the
offering with fugitive mistrust, and gloomily possessed himself of it.
"I'll look after them," he said. "Be ye thinkin' of walkin'?"

"Yes," said Amber over his shoulder. He was already moving toward the
door.

"Knaow yeour wa-ay?"

"I've been here before, thank you."

"Fer another quarter," drawled the agent with elaborate apathy, "I'd
leave the office long enough to find somebody who'd fetch ye daown in a
rig for fifty cents."

But Amber was already out of ear-shot.

Crossing the tracks, he addressed himself to the southward-stretching
highway. Walking briskly at first, he soon left behind the
railway-station with its few parasitic cottages; a dip in the land hid
them, and he had hereafter for all company his thoughts, the desultory
road, a vast and looming sky, and bare fields hedged with impoverished
forest.