It was a beautiful October afternoon; the wind, warm and dry, caught
the yellow leaves from the trees overhead in little whiffs, and blew
them about the grass, which the fall rains had made as green as May;
and a pensive golden light streamed through the long loose boughs,
and struck across the slopes of the Common. Slight buggies flashed
by on the street near which he sat, and glistening carriages, with
drivers dressed out in uniform like soldiers, rumbled down its
slope.

While he sat looking, now at the street and now at the people
sauntering and hurrying to and fro in the Common, he tried to decide
a question that had mixed itself up with the formless resentment he
had felt ever since Mr. Sewell played him false. It had got out in
the neighbourhood that he was going to Boston before he left home;
his mother must have told it; and people would think he was to be
gone a long time. He had warned his mother that he did not know when
he should be back, before he started in the morning; and he knew
that she would repeat his words to everybody who stopped to ask
about him during the day, with what she had said to him in reply:
"You better come home to-night, Lem; and I'll have ye a good hot
supper waitin' for ye."

The question was whether he should go back on the five o'clock
train, which would reach Willoughby Centre after dark, and house
himself from public ignominy for one night at least, or whether
self-respect did not demand that he should stay in Boston for
twenty-four hours at any rate, and see if something would not
happen. He had now no distinct hope of anything; but his pride and
shame were holding him fast, while the home-sickness tugged at his
heart, and made him almost forget the poverty that had spurred him