“You can just call me Phinney, then.” Phinney gave the reins a snap, and the wagon jerked into motion down the road. “You’re not from around these parts, I take it?”

“Well, sort of,” Wally began, “I’m a student at Adams.”

“Well, a college boy in my presence,” Phinney exclaimed with a grin that seemed out of place on his fiftyish face. “Howdj ya end up this side of Monroe?”

“Celebrating,” Wally explained, then glanced aside nervously. “The Armistice, you know.”

“Ah, yes. My neighbor stopped by this mornin’ to tell me about it.” Phinney turned his head far enough in Wally’s direction to glance him in the eye. “Seems a mighty good way that everything ended, horrible as everything was.”

“Yes, it’s a good thing that it’s over.”

Phinney glanced aside again, this time with a look of stern suspicion. “Celebratin’? I’d a thought a young man like you’d be over there yourself. You look fit and young enough.”

Wally flushed and looked back equally sternly. “My eyes. I’ve got bad eyes.” Then, to Phinney’s questioning look at his frameless face, “I lost my glasses in the woods last night.”

Phinney smiled again, this time with soft amusement as he looked straight ahead and snapped the reins again to pick up speed on a road that was quickly becoming rutless. “I was a young man once myself, though that was a long time ago.” Now the smile widened, and the glances at his passenger grew friendly once more. “Born the last day of Lincoln’s War, I was.”

Wally felt a chill pass through his body, even as the sun emerged from behind a temporary cloud and bathed driver, passenger, and horses in warm light. “You’ve lived here all your life, Phinney?”