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October.

much delay I was finally obliged to settle down somewhere; I kept putting it off on the pretense that I wanted to look carefully over the ground, but I had to come to it at last, much against my will. At first the whole town was open to me, and my friends were eager to offer me a bed for a night or two; every one naturally pitied a man whose hearth was a heap of cold cinders, and wanted to give him what help they could; "at first" I say, but as the recollection of our disasters faded away, people began once more to draw back into their shells,&mdash;except poor victims like me who had no shells left to draw into.

My children would have been shocked at the bare idea of my living at the inn; such a thing was never heard of among good Clamecyans of our sort, and, though it was not exactly a matter of feeling with my sons, there was the terrible question to be considered&mdash;"What would people say?" There was no hurry, of course, on their part or on Rh