in him an unbearable restlessness. An unaccountable depression
stole upon him--the reaction, perhaps, from a good deal of mental
exertion and excitement in the day. A sort of sick distaste awoke
in him for most of the incidents of existence--for Aunt Hannah, for
Uncle Reuben's incomprehensible prayers, for the thought of the
long Puritanical Sunday just coming. And, in addition, the low
vibrations of that distant sobbing stirred in him again, by
association, certain memories which were like a clutch of physical
pain, and which the healthy young animal instinctively and
passionately avoided whenever it could. But to-night, in the dark
and in solitude, there were no distractions, and as the boy put his
head down on his arms, rolling it from side to side as though to
shake them off, the same old images pursued him--the lodging-house
room, and the curtainless iron bed in which he slept with his
father: reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish through
which that father had passed; then of his death, and his own lonely
crying. He seemed still to _feel_ the strange sheets in that
bed upstairs, where a compassionate fellow-lodger had put him the
night after his father died; he sat up again bewildered in the cold
dawn, filled with a home-sickness too benumbing for words. He
resented these memories, tried to banish them; but the nature on
which they were impressed was deep and rich, and, once shaken,
vibrated long. The boy trembled through and through. The more he
was ordinarily shed abroad, diffused in the life of sensation and
boundless mental curiosity, the blacker were these rare moments of
self-consciousness, when all the world seemed pain, an iron vice
which pinched and tortured him.

At last he went to his door, pulled it gently open, and with bare
feet went across to Louie's room, which he entered with infinite