Conversation was impossible to the boy, with his mind so crowded with perplexing doubts. He could not even take notice of the shop-windows, or of the life in the streets, but followed blindly along by the side of Harris. Somehow he felt as though he were walking under a heavy weight, and that roll of money in his pocket seemed to be burning him where it rested against his breast. He imagined that the people he met looked at him suspiciously, as if they knew he had been bribed—bribed!
The word came into his mind so suddenly, and with such startling force, that he stopped still in the street, and only recovered himself when Harris turned and called to him.
They were just in time for the train.
Tom found a place in the corner of the car where he would be alone, and sat there thinking over what he had done, and trying to reason himself into justification of his conduct.
The conductor came along and punched his ticket, and looked at him so sharply that Tom wondered if he knew. But of course that was absurd. Then he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind altogether, and give his attention to what he could see from the car-window.
Outside a drizzling rain was beginning to fall on the brown fields and leafless trees, and the autumn early twilight was fast deepening into darkness. It was very dismal and cheerless, and not at all the kind of outlook that could serve to draw Tom’s mind from its task of self-contemplation. It was but a few minutes, therefore, before this controversy with himself was going on again, harder than before.
Somehow that strange word “bribed” kept haunting him. It sounded constantly in his ears. He imagined that the people in the cars were speaking it; that even the rhythmic rattle of the wheels upon the rails kept singing it to him with monotonous reiteration, “Bribed! bribed!”
Tom thought, as he hurried down the street in the gathering darkness, out upon the plank walk, and up the long hill toward home, that he had never been so unhappy in all his life before. It was strange, too, for he had so often dreamed of the great joy he should feel when the coveted hundred dollars had been saved.
Well, he had it now, every cent of it, rolled up and tucked safely away in the pocket of his vest; but instead of happiness, it had brought misery.
For the first time within his memory, the thought of meeting his mother and his brother gave him no pleasure. He would not tell them about the money that night at any rate; he had decided upon that. Indeed, he had almost concluded that it would be better that they should not know about it until after the trial. And then suppose they should not approve! He was aghast at the very thought.