preying on his conscience, and that he'd never be happy until he had
made atonement--that was the light in which she would view the matter,
so it would be better to let things take their natural course and to
avoid making plans. The more he thought of what he should say to Eliza,
the less likely was he to speak effectively; and feeling that he had
better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from
his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. He had always liked
the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal
street in the town. There were some pretty houses in the dip--houses
with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning
of the nineteenth century--and his ambition was once to live in one of
these houses.

The bridge was an eighteenth-century bridge, with a foaming weir on the
left, and on the right there was a sentimental walk under linden-trees,
and there were usually some boys seated on the parapet fishing. He would
have liked to stop the car, so remote did the ruined mills seem--so like
things of long ago that time had mercifully weaned from the stress and
struggle of life.

At the corner of the main street was the house in which he was born. The
business had passed into other hands, but the old name--'Gogarty's
Drapery Stores'--remained. Across the way were the butcher and the
grocer, and a little higher up the inn at which the commercial
travellers lodged. He recalled their numerous leather trunks, and for a
moment stood a child again, seeing them drive away on post-cars. A few
more shops had been added--very few--and then the town dwindled quickly,
slated roofs giving way to thatched cottages, and of the same miserable
kind that was wont to provoke his antipathy when he was a boy.