play with the idea. "The best men are all trying to do that. They spend
their lives at the task. They are all trying to find truth."

He went along the street, pleased with himself because of the
interpretation he had put upon the minister's words. The terrible moments
in the kitchen followed by his mother's death had put a new look of
seriousness into his face and he felt within him a new sense of
responsibility to the dead woman and to himself. Men stopped him on the
street and wished him well in the city. News of his leaving had become
public. Things in which Freedom Smith was concerned were always public
affairs.

"He would take a drum with him to make love to a neighbour's wife," said
John Telfer.

Sam felt that in a way he was a child of Caxton. Early it had taken him to
its bosom; it had made of him a semi-public character; it had encouraged
him in his money-making, humiliated him through his father, and patronised
him lovingly because of his toiling mother. When he was a boy, scurrying
between the legs of the drunkards in Piety Hollow of a Saturday night,
there was always some one to speak a word to him of his morals and to
shout at him a cheering word of advice. Had he elected to remain there,
with the thirty-five hundred dollars already in the Savings Bank--built to
that during his years with Freedom Smith--he might soon become one of the
town's solid men.

He did not want to stay. He felt that his call was in another place and
that he would go there gladly. He wondered why he did not get on the train
and be off.