along the fence, and entering the front door with the silent droop in spirit of a dog suddenly brought to heel.
His whole life was opening before him, inviting him like an adventurous and breezy road; and in those days of waiting, he resolved that wherever that road might lead him, it should bring him back to Coulton—except as a hasty visitor—never again.
IV
He woke to his expected liberty, on the following Sunday morning, in his boarding-house room—a room as small as a squirrel-cage, with its slanting roof and its dormer window the sash of which, hung loosely on hinges, allowed a powdered snow to sift in on the sill. The railroad journey of the previous night had been an impatient flight to this haven of lonely freedom; and he had fallen asleep, too tired to think, with a happy assurance that the next day would rise on his new life.
It had risen. The sun was bright on window-panes that were white with a hoar frost as thick as a lichen. His trunk, still unstrapped, stood in a corner. His lamp was on his table, his books on the shelves of the "what-not" which served him as a bookcase. It was as if he were in a cabin on board ship, a night's sail from land; and he was eager to be out on deck to see the new horizon.
He jumped from his bed, and the cold closed on
