The name, when you just spoke it, struck me rather queer.

I--I used to know a Brant in the Seventh, but he was much older; it was not this man." She answered something, lingering for a moment at the door, but he made no response, and she passed out silently, leaving him staring moodily through the open window, his eyes appearing glazed and sightless.
Glencaid, like most mining towns of its class, was dull and dead enough during the hours of daylight.

It was not until after darkness fell that it awoke from its somnolence, when the scattered miners came swarming down from out the surrounding hills and turned into a noisy, restless playground the single narrow, irregular street.

Then it suddenly became a mad commixture of Babel and hell.

At this hour nothing living moved within range of the watcher's vision except a vagrant dog; the heat haze hung along the near-by slopes, while a little spiral of dust rose lazily from the deserted road.