ong
that you can't set right down in his particular class before he's even
registered. But Weston had blocked him at every turn. Elmer knew no
more of the man now than on the day he came. In fact, he was getting
more and more tangled up about him all the time. For instance, why
should one who could read Goth and understand the "Sorrows," want to
set around the store and argue with such-like ignoramuses as Ike Bolum
and Hen Holmes? Spiker was willing to bet that right now Weston was
over the way trying to prove to them that two and two was four.

The suggestion seemed a likely one, so I interrupted the flow of
Elmer's troubled thoughts to say good-night, and went out. I paused a
moment on the porch. A lamp was blazing in the store and I could
plainly see everyone gathered along the counter. Henry Holmes was
standing with his back to the stove, one hand wagging up and down at
the solemn line of figures on the bench. But Weston was not there.
And in our valley, when a man is not at home o'night he should be at
the store, else there is a mystery to be solved. To solve this one I
stopped on the tavern steps, leaned against a pillar, and gazed through
the dozing village.

At the head of the street where our house stood a bright light burned.
There Tim was and there I should be also. A hundred times down South
on my post at night, with my back on the rows and rows of white tents,
I had sought to pierce the black gloom before me as if there I could
see that same light--the home light. Often I fancied I saw it, and in
its bright circle Tim was bending over his book. Here it was in truth,
calling me, but I turned from it and looked away over the flats, where
another light was winking on the hillside.

Behind that hill, on the eastward ridge, a great ball is glowing, fiery
red. Higher and higher it rises, into the tree-tops, then over them;
higher and higher, bathing the valley in soft, white light, uncovering
the gray road that climbs the ridge-side; higher and higher, until the
pines on the ridge-top stand out boldly, fringing into the sky; higher
and higher, casting mysterious shadows over the meadows, touching with
light the hillside, new-ploughed and naked; clear and white lies the
road over the flats to the hill there--clear and white and smooth. On
the hillside the light is burning. It is only a short half mile, and
the way is easy. In the old house at the end of the street another
light is blinking sole