Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/103

 friends. They were no longer to be found. Some were at work, some had moved away. The boys playing ball seemed absurdly young. The vacant lots themselves were absurdly small and rough. How could he have played there? He gave the thing up and moped.

What was there to do? He got on his wheel again and went out over the Plank Road as far as Passaic, swung left through Montclair, the Oranges, out to Elizabeth and home through Newark. Home was just as dull as he had left it. Neale was bored to desperation, and on a chance went into the parlor and opened the book-case. He was no great reader. In his own room there was a fair collection of Henty, G. Manville Fenn and Harry CastlemanCastlemon [sic], but none of these seemed worth re-reading. He didn't suppose these grown-up books in the library could be worth anything, but he took down a volume to see.

"Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place over-grown with nettles was the churchyard … and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

Hold your noise!' cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. 'Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!

Half an hour later Neale was still standing by the book-case, the book in his hand, his mouth hanging open, shivering in the clammy mist together with Pip and the man with the iron chain. An hour later he was tucked into the Morris chair, among the cushions of which he hid the book when the dinner bell made him reluctantly lay it aside.

What made him hide it? An invincible sense of moral