ght.

In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold November
evening, but few citizens appeared and these hurried
along bent on getting to the stove at the back of some
store. The windows of the stores were frosted and the
wind rattled the tin sign that hung over the entrance
to the stairway leading to Doctor Welling's office.
Before Hern's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack
filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk. Elmer
Cowley stopped and stood facing George Willard. He
tried to talk and his arms began to pump up and down.
His face worked spasmodically. He seemed about to
shout. "Oh, you go on back," he cried. "Don't stay out
here with me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I don't
want to see you at all."

For three hours the distracted young merchant wandered
through the resident streets of Winesburg blind with
anger, brought on by his failure to declare his
determination not to be queer. Bitterly the sense of
defeat settled upon him and he wanted to weep. After
the hours of futile sputtering at nothingness that had
occupied the afternoon and his failure in the presence
of the young reporter, he thought he could see no hope
of a future for himself.

And then a new idea dawned for him. In the darkness
that surrounded him he began to see a light. Going to
the now darkened store, where Cowley & Son had for over
a year waited vainly for trade to come, he crept
stealthily in and felt about in a barrel that stood by
the stove at the rear. In the barrel beneath shavings
lay a tin box containing Cowley & Son's cash. Every
evening Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the barrel when
he closed the store and went upstairs to bed. "They
wouldn't never think of a careless place like that," he
told himself, thinking of robbers.

Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten-dollar bills, from
the little roll containing perhaps four hundred
dollars, the cash left from the sale of the farm. Then
replacing the box beneath the shavings he went quietly
out at the front door and walked again in the streets.

The idea that he thought might put an end to all of his
unhappiness was very simple. "I will get out of here,
run away from home," he told himself. He knew that a
local freight train passed through Winesburg at
midnight and went on to Cleveland, where it arrived at
dawn. He would steal a ride on the local and when he
got to Cleveland would lose himself in the crowds
there. He would get work in some shop and become
friends with