It was like telling the news of an absent ghost to another present.
"This town was never a place," said Gilly, with all his former steadiness,--"never a place to bring a woman.

And--and of her age." All three men listened to the conflict of gongs and crackers, and to the shouting, now muffled and distant behind the knoll.

All three, as it seemed to Rudolph, had consented to ignore something vile.
"That's all I wanted to know," said the older man, slowly.

"I must get back to my post.

You didn't say, but--She made no attempt to come here?
Well, that's--that's lucky.