le to decipher and comprehend railway time-tables; he had
few gifts, but this was one of them. It failed him now; so he wandered
back to the ticket-window, and, after urgent coaching, eventually took
his place at the end instead of at the head of the line that waited
there. In his turn he came again to the window, and departed from it
after a conversation with the clerk that left the latter in accord with
Aunt Fanny Atwater's commiserating adjective, though the clerk's own
pity was expressed in argot. "The poor nut!" he explained to his next
client. "Wants to buy a ticket on a train that don't pull out until ten
thirty-five to-night; and me fillin' it all out, stampin' it and
everything, what for? Turned out all his pockets and couldn't come
within eight dollars o' the price! Where you want to go?"

Noble went back to his bench and sat there for a long time, though there
was no time, long or short, for him. He was not yet consciously
suffering; nor was he thinking at all. True, he had a dim, persistent
impulse to action--or why should he be at the station?--but for the
clearest expression of his condition it is necessary to borrow a
culinary symbol; he was jelling. But the state of shock was slowly
dispersing, while a perception of approaching anguish as slowly
increased. He was beginning to swallow nothing at intervals and the
intervals were growing shorter.

Dusk was misting down, outdoors, when with dragging steps he came out of
the station. He looked hazily up and down the street, where the
corner-lamps and shop-windows now were lighted; and, after dreary
hesitation, he went in search of a pawn-shop, and found one. The old man
who operated it must have been a philanthropist, for Noble was so
fortunate as to secure a loan of nine dollars upon his watch. Surprised
at this, he returned to the station, and went back to the same old
bench.

It was fully occupied, and he stood for some time looking with vague
reproach at the large family of coloured people who had taken it. He had
a feeling that he lived there and that these coloured people were
trespassers; but upon becoming aware that part of an orange was being
rubbed over his left shoe by the youngest of the children, he groaned
abruptly and found another bench.

A little after six o'clock a clanging and commotion in the train-shed
outside, attending the arrival of a "through express," stirred him from
his torpor, and he walked heavily across the room to the same