The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter Page A

streets where they had walked before, leaving trails of melancholy and despair. He puzzled over the deep insupportable sadness. Were he and the dead the only victims or did many of the living feel it, too? At this very moment here in Unionville were there those who went about their chores and errands, confessing nothing to those about them, saying “It’s a warm evening” or “See you tomorrow,” carrying their grief with them to their beds and to their feet when they got up in the morning, never knowing its source, nor did any other man?
    Some of the stores were closing but the depot remained open and lighted, waiting for the eight fifty-five from Auburn, the last train till the early miners’ train in the morning. John Donner was grateful for the open waiting room. He felt a little peace here in this house that belonged to anabsentee landlord and was free from the pressures of the personally occupied. Nobody resented his presence or showed that he wished him to leave. The very look of the benches was impersonal, meant for transients such as he and the two old men smoking and talking with long lapses of silence in this pleasant retreat shot with the scent of travel and far places and the sudden chatter of the telegraph instrument.
    Sitting here, John Donner thought of the stations of the cross. Well, there were also stations of the aged and out of work of all ages, sanctuaries in which to catch their breath and pass that which lay such a daily burden on them. As a boy he had never thought much about it, but he could see the stations in his mind now, all over Unionville, the watch box at the crossing, the stools in Rehrer’s saddlery and at the shoemaker’s, standing room at Hoy’s blacksmith and wheelwright shops, the chairs on the DeWitt porch and store benches under the wooden mercantile awnings, a dozen facilities now vanished. And yet modern towns considered themselves humane and all-providing.
    He watched with regret the train come in, the sprinkle of passengers and the two old men depart to their homes. Never had lighted windows looked so desirable and unattainable, even those far back from the street. As a boy he hadthought the peculiar and withdrawn lived there. Tonight the gloomy paths leading to these distant houses were gilded with golden light. Their windows and those of all Unionville houses, he noticed, had a mysterious and elusive quality like life, not artificial and glittering as the electric-lit windows he had left above the chasm. Down here they flushed with a soft bloom, as if a glowworm had turned on its cold light. You looked for it to go out but it kept on and you kept watching it like a modest flower or small miracle. Almost never did these windows plunge suddenly on, or off into blackness, like lamps fed by the fickle magnetic spark. They dimmed and faintly brightened as if even the inanimate here breathed and was alive.
    Everywhere he wandered now the smell of the river pursued him, soft and seductive, like the scent of a woman following him, reaching out and touching him, till at length he turned and submitted, crossing the lower tracks, passing Christenson’s coalyard office, another station of the aged, and Felty’s Mill, which he had always thought the best-proportioned building in town. The black mouth of the covered bridge known as Felty’s opened before him. Entering, he could taste the dry smell of ancient dust and make out through the gloom the great double arches rising on eitherside. He remembered how in the Red Bridge as boys they would climb the whitewashed arches and lie hugging the wood while a train roared through, shaking the structure as if to demolish it and them all.
    He felt his way up the south arch here, a triple one of great planks from the early forest, steamed, bent and riveted together. At least he would have a roof over his head. It wasn’t too bad stretching out on his wooden couch, feeling the massive strength of his bedstead, hearing the low twittering of