He had it on his mind to utilize some of his leisure by writing long letters that he might post when it was possible for him to go home; to-night he wrote two of them.
While he was writing he heard the people coming in twos and threes along the road back to their houses for the night.

He supposed that O'Shea had got home with the girls he had been escorting, and that his wife had come home, and that Madame Le Maitre had come back to her house and taken up again her regular routine of life..