they would respect the Ten Commandments and all statutory laws, State and
Federal, and he was painfully conscious that when he confessed his sin she
would deal severely with him. Even Humpy, now enjoying a peace that he had
rarely known outside the walls of prison, even Humpy would be bitter. The
thought that he was again among the hunted would depress Mary and Humpy,
and he knew that their harshness would be intensified because of his
violation of the unwritten law of the underworld in resorting to
purse-lifting, an infringement upon a branch of felony despicable and
greatly inferior in dignity to safe-blowing.

These reflections spurred The Hopper to action, for the sooner he reached
home the more quickly he could explain his protracted stay in New York (to
which metropolis he had repaired in the hope of making a better price for
eggs with the commission merchants who handled his products), submit
himself to Mary's chastisement, and promise to sin no more. By returning
on Christmas Eve, of all times, again a fugitive, he knew that he would
merit the unsparing condemnation that Mary and Humpy would visit upon him.
It was possible, it was even quite likely, that the short, stocky
gentleman he had seen on the New Haven local was not a "bull"--not really
a detective who had observed the little transaction in the subway; but the
very uncertainty annoyed The Hopper. In his happy and profitable year at
Happy Hill Farm he had learned to prize his personal comfort, and he was
humiliated to find that he had been frightened into leaving the train at
Bansford to continue his journey afoot, and merely because a man had
looked at him a little queerly.

Any Christmas spirit that had taken root in The Hopper's soul had been
disturbed, not to say seriously threatened with extinction, by the
untoward occurrences of the afternoon.