The Judge is quite excited about it.
You drink little bugs, he says, a billion after every meal. They come in
tall blue bottles. We're going to dine together next week and drink 'em
till we're all lit up. Oh, we're going to have a hell of a time. _His_ wife
left town on Tuesday."
"Bruce," said Roger sternly, as the train began to move, "leave bugs alone
and come up and breathe! And quit smoking so many cigarettes!" He stepped
on the car.
"Remember, son, a solid month!" Bruce nodded as the train moved out.
"Good luck--good-bye--fine summer--my love to the wife and the kiddies--"
and Bruce's dark, tense, smiling face was left behind. Roger went back into
the smoker.
"Now for the mountains," he thought. "Thank God!"
CHAPTER XIV
A few hours later Roger awakened. His lower berth was still pitch dark. The
train had stopped, and he had been roused by a voice outside his window.
Rough and slow and nasal, the leisurely drawl of a mountaineer, it came
like balm to Roger's ears. He raised the curtain and looked out. A train
hand with a lantern was listening to a dairy man, a tall young giant in top
boots. High overhead loomed a shadowy mountain and over its rim came the
glow of the dawn. With a violent lurch the train moved on. And Roger, lying
back on his pillow, looked up at the misty mountain sides all mottled in
the strange blue light with patches of firs and birches and pines.
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