CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the fifth day of April Angus Burke arrived again in Rainbow, at first glance a young man, on closer scrutiny a boy to whom gravity gave a fictitious semblance of maturity. As he stepped from the train he turned his head first one way and then another, until his eyes, almost furtive, compassed the complete semicircle of his vision. He lifted his shoulders; seemed to draw himself together with a shudder, as one who encounters a chill draught. He was doing a thing which required courage of no mean order, a higher courage than that which carries men to the mouth of the cannon or into a darkness peopled with lurking enemies. An assault upon the body cannot compare in dreadfulness with an assault upon the soul.
What had he expected? He did not know. Instant recognition, raucous jeers, an instant of dreadfulness, perhaps…. He poised, tense, waiting for it, but it did not come. Nothing came. He arrived—that was all, arrived as any unheralded stranger might arrive….
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