“Suppose the recruiting place is closed,” he kept thinking. “Suppose they are closing it now! Suppose the last man they need is just applying and the officer in charge is saying, ‘Shut the doors!’”
They bumped to a stop at Clifford’s Junction, three miles from Piscataqua and waited ten minutes—fifteen—twenty.
“How long is this going to last?” Billy finally appealed to the brakeman.
“We’ve got to wait here for the Boston train and she’s an hour late,” was the easy reply. “Don’t fuss, young man, she’ll be along by and by.”
“I’ll walk,” returned Billy, and flung himself down the steps.
There was no town at the Junction, no place where a conveyance was to be had, so walk Billy did. The road was rough and rutty, it seemed eternally climbing up hills and never going down them; the distance seemed thirty miles instead of three. The rain clouds cleared and the sun came out, hot and steaming, to beat mercilessly upon his uncovered head. His shoes were heavy and stiff from their salt-water soaking, there was salt, too, in his hair, his eyes and in his parched throat. He stumbled on, knowing vaguely from the shortening shadows that it was nearly noon, that the time was flying and that even now it might be too late.
He began to pass small houses, he crossed the bridge that spanned Piscataqua’s tide-river, he came into the town itself. He threaded his way up and down several narrow, crooked streets until he came out at last upon a broader one, with a feeling that he had seen it before. Yes, there ahead of him was the recruiting station, he could not mistake it. His head was swimming with heat and weariness, he could hardly lift his feet; people stopped and looked strangely at him, but he pressed on. The flag was still flying, a bluejacket was standing on the step, the door was open, he was in time.
The sailor held out a hand to help him as he stumbled over the threshold, but Billy shook it off. What he was about to do he was going to do alone. Inside a uniformed officer was sitting behind a desk; he, too, looked up anxiously as he caught a glimpse of the boy’s exhausted face, and half rose to aid him. Mutely Billy shook his head; he did not want assistance. He held to the back of a chair and stood up very stiff and straight before the desk.