hastening
to an important engagement. However, always his mind was working over a
hard problem. He knew that his store of money was scanty, that it would
not last long even with the strictest economy; he had no friends; a
prison record is sure to leak out when a man seeks a job. He was facing
the problem of bare existence.

Although the day was so hot, it was late summer; soon would come the
frost and the winter. He wished to live to enjoy his freedom, and all he
had for assets was that freedom; which was paradoxical, for it did not
signify the ability to obtain work, which was the power of life.
Outside the stone wall of the prison he was now inclosed by a subtle,
intangible, yet infinitely more unyielding one--the prejudice of his
kind against the released prisoner. He was to all intents and purposes
a prisoner still, for all his spurts of swagger and the youthful leap
of his pulses, and while he did not admit that to himself, yet always,
since he had the hard sense of the land of his birth--New England--he
pondered that problem of existence. He felt instinctively that it
would be a useless proceeding for him to approach any human being for
employment. He knew that even the freedom, which he realized through all
his senses like an essential perfume, could not yet overpower the reek
of the prison. As he walked through the clogging dust he thought of one
after another whom he had known before he had gone out of the world of
free men and had bent his back under the hand of the law. There were, of
course, people in his little native village, people who had been friends
and neighbors, but there were none who had ever loved him sufficiently
for him to conquer his resolve to never ask aid of them. He had no
relatives except cousins more or less removed, and they would have
nothing to do with him.

There had been a woman whom he had meant to marry, and he had been sure
that she would marry him; but after he had been a year in prison the
news had come to him in a roundabout fashion that she had married
another suitor. Even had she remained single he could not have
approached her, least of all for aid. Then, too, through all his term
she had made no sign, there had been no letter, no message; and he had
received at first letters and flowers and messages from sentimental
women. There had been nothing from her. He had accepted nothing, with
the curious patience, carrying an odd pleasure with it, which had come
to him when the p