After he had learned some more he would be a printer's devil like Terry, and fetch the beer and run the job press and do other interesting things.

There was a little thrill for him in knowing you could say devil in this connection without having people think you were using a bad word.
But Dave's time had come.

He "yearned over the skyline, where the strange roads go down," though he put it more sharply to Sam Pickering one late afternoon: "Well, Sam, I feel itchy-footed." "I knew it," said Sam.

"When are you leaving ?" "No train out till the six-fifty-eight." And Sam knew he would be meaning the six-fifty-eight of that same day.
He never meant the day after, or the day after that.
That evening Dave sauntered down to the depot, accompanied by his son.
There was no strained air of expectancy about him, and no tedious management of bags.

He might have been seeking merely the refreshment of watching the six-fifty-eight come in and go out, as did a dozen or so of the more leisured class of Newbern.