angel too. The apple had dropped at my feet; I had not pulled it. There
it would lie wasting, if some one with less right than I--said the
prince of special pleaders--was not the second to find it. Besides,
what fell in the road was public property. Only this was not a public
road, the angel reminded me. My will fluttered from side to side, now
turning its ear to my conscience, now turning away and hearkening to my
impulse. At last, weary of the strife, I determined to settle it by a
just contempt of trifles--and, half in desperation, bit into the ruddy
cheek.

The moment I saw the wound my teeth had made, I knew what I had done,
and my heart died within me. I was self-condemned. It was a new and an
awful sensation--a sensation that could not be for a moment endured.
The misery was too intense to leave room for repentance even. With a
sudden resolve born of despair, I shoved the type of the broken law
into my pocket and followed my companions. But I kept at some distance
behind them, for as yet I dared not hold further communication with
respectable people. I did not, and do not now, believe that there was
one amongst them who would have done as I had done. Probably also not
one of them would have thought of my way of deliverance from
unendurable self-contempt. The curse had passed upon me, but I saw a
way of escape.

A few yards further, they found the road we thought we had missed. It
struck off into a hollow, the sides of which were covered with trees.
As they turned into it they looked back and called me to come on. I ran
as if I wanted to overtake them, but the moment they were out of sight,
left the road for the grass, and set off at full speed in the same
direction as before. I had not gone far before I was in the midst of
trees, overflowing the hollow in which my companions had disappeared,