Part 48 (1/2)

He remembered the gla.s.s of cider and the piece of bread.

He could not bring himself to move to-night.

He felt the suffocating weight of the stillness crowding past him. It was expanding menacingly throughout the small room. It filled in all about him.

Presently old man Efferts would finish his pipe and would get up and shamble out of the door. He would sit there and watch him go as he always watched, wondering if perhaps old man Efferts was not real. And then he would stumble up to bed and lie awake and listen to the stillness that grew greater and greater.

He wanted the relief from that silence; wanted it desperately; pa.s.sionately.

He remembered that if he told Efferts of that thing that he had come so near forgetting in the smothering quiet that he would have what he so frantically wanted. Some human speech. Human talk that would break the silence even for a little while; the sound of human voices that would rise and answer each other.

He glanced at the old man surrept.i.tiously. He tried to think what expression would come into that stupid face with the bewildered eyes; he tried to see the thin-lipped drooling mouth as it would look with the lips of it startled into moving.

He sat very still.

Words formed themselves; lagging into his mind.

”I--am--going--to--tell--”

He would start to say it to old man Efferts that way.

He could not stand the stillness any longer.

Anything was better than the appalling agony of the quiet.

He made a little tentative movement with his thin, shaking hands.

He felt that Efferts was staring at him.

The mongrel crouching at his feet moved stealthily. He heard no sound from the animal's moving. He knew it had gotten to its feet. He saw it standing there between where he sat and where Efferts sat.

He felt his lips begin to quiver.