There were times when he thought he might tell old man Efferts of that thing which he had done years ago and which had isolated him from his fellows. Not that he thought so much of it. He had almost forgotten it. The stillness had made him forget everything but itself; had pushed everything out of his mind before its own spreading weight. But he kept the thought of speaking to Efferts of what he had done in the back of his head. He knew how his telling it to Efferts could not fail to act. He knew that something would infallibly happen; that the surprise of it could not help but penetrate the thickness of Efferts' silence. He always felt, soothing himself with the thought of relief, that when the power of the stillness became unbearable he would shock old Efferts into talk. There were moments when he hungered savagely to force old Efferts out of his walling quiet. Moments when he was starving for the comfort of human sound. His voice and Efferts' voice. Voices that would rise above the stillness; voices that would penetrate cunningly through the quiet; voices that would speak and answer each other.
He was sitting in the center of his lamp lit room. He had had his supper and had cleared away the dishes with his usual crafty carefulness. He had lighted his pipe. He sat in the chair beside the table; his body quite rigid; his arms and legs stiffened to a torturing quiet. The mongrel crouched at his feet. There was something strange in the way the animal lay; in its tightened muscles that pulled and twitched as it breathed. Whenever he looked down his eyes met the dog's eyes.
Outside the heavy shadows of the night crept along the ground, pushed on by the rushing, rising silence behind them. He knew that the stillness was rolling down the slope of those long hills. He knew that its awful quiet was gathering in the valley. He knew that it was trickling horridly still into the low ceilinged room. He had the feeling for the thousandth time that the most minute noise was swallowed up in the stillness before it came into being.
He looked up then to see the door shoved warily ajar. A wrinkled, ugly hand showed against the dark wood in a lighter patch of brown. A coarse booted foot came behind the swing of the door. Standing against the black of the night he saw old man Efferts.