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midafternoon smell of hot lunch being converted into air.
    This hour, between two and three, Miles wilted. Because he had been stern from the beginning, study hall gave him no sass, but it gave him the blues. The lighting, as mentioned, was dim, and the afternoon sun, when it shone, did not shine on this side of the building. The students’ minds were not fresh. They made a weak attempt at homework, then pushed it aside, tomorrow’s classes being too distant to imagine. They watched the clock. They dreamed daydreams so dull that they fell asleep. Miles sat on his platform wondering if he would be able to rise from his chair when the bell rang, wondering if he would have the strength to walk home, wondering if life was worth living.
    There was a moment today, at 2:25, when study hall came suddenly to life. Heads were lifted and cocked as the siren in the belfry of the city hall announced trouble, probably a fire, somewhere in Staggerford. Students stood up at their desks and strained to see outside. Miles found this sign of vitality so reassuring that he allowed everyone togo to the windows and watch the volunteer firemen run into the fire hall across the street and come out wearing yellow rubber coats and clinging to the handholds of two shiny ladder trucks. When the trucks were out of sight there was a little chatter, which Miles quickly scotched, and then everyone returned to his desk and to his dim and vapid daydreams.
    At the final bell of the day, Miles dismissed study hall and went downstairs to take up his hall-duty post outside his classroom. He said goodnight twenty-five or thirty times. When the halls emptied, he put in the required quarter hour at his desk; then he picked up his briefcase, put his coat over his arm, and stepped outside into the perfume of dying leaves.
    He crossed the street and walked past the fire station. The firemen, sweating in their yellow rubber coats, had returned from the fire and were backing the trucks into their stalls. He passed the city hall and he passed the spacious lawn of the Staggerford Public Library. At the corner of Main Street he turned and walked past the
Weekly
office, where Albert Fremling was licking address labels and Mrs. Fremling was talking on the phone and Lee Fremling was cleaning the drum of the press with a rag dipped in denatured alcohol and Grandma Fremling was sweeping the floor. He walked past the Hub Cafe, the Morgan Hotel, the hardware store, the bakery, and the bank. He turned right at the next corner and walked down River Street past the houses of Oppegaard the dentist, Hoover the retired farmer, Droppers the mayor, Handyside the baker, and Kelly the auto mechanic. The last house at the end of the second block was Miss McGee’s. He climbed the three steps to the wide front porch. The front door with its thick pane of oval glass stood ajar. He went inside and hung his coat in the closet at the foot of the stairs.
    “How was your day?” Miss McGee called from the kitchen.
    “A good enough day. It seemed long though. How was yours?”
    “The Dark Ages are beginning all over again, Miles.”
    “What makes you say that?” She often told him this, but her reason for saying it differed from day to day. He walked through the living room (deep soft chairs with worn upholstery, dark woodwork, a bookcase with glass doors) and through the dining room (a round oak table, six chairs, a mirror over the sideboard, linen curtains) and stood in the kitchen doorway.
    Miss McGee was gathering together bottles and vegetables from the refrigerator—the makings of a salad—and listening to news on the radio. Miss McGee was a spinster. This was her forty-first year teaching sixth grade at St. Isidore’s Catholic Elementary, and this was the house she had been born in.
    “How is the world going wrong, Agatha?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. One thing and another.”
    It was not like her to be vague, and Miles waited for her to tell him what had happened, but she said no