ome in short,
quick snuffles. All in him was conquered save the enigmatical childish
ideal of form, manner. This principle still held out, and it was the
only thing between him and submission. When he surrendered, he must
surrender in a way that deferred to the undefined code. He longed
simply to go to the kitchen and stumble in, but his unfathomable sense
of fitness forbade him.

Presently he found himself at the head of Niagara Avenue, staring
through the snow into the blazing windows of Stickney's butcher-shop.
Stickney was the family butcher, not so much because of a superiority
to other Whilomville butchers as because he lived next door and had
been an intimate friend of the father of Horace. Rows of glowing pigs
hung head downward back of the tables, which bore huge pieces of red
beef. Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.
Stickney, hale and smiling, was bantering with a woman in a cloak,
who, with a monster basket on her arm, was dickering for eight cents'
worth of some thing. Horace watched them through a crusted pane. When
the woman came out and passed him, he went towards the door. He
touched the latch with his finger, but withdrew again suddenly to the
sidewalk. Inside Stickney was whistling cheerily and assorting his
knives.

[Illustration: "Eight Cents Worth of Something"]

Finally Horace went desperately forward, opened the door, and entered
the shop. His head hung low. Stickney stopped whistling. "Hello, young
man," he cried, "what brings you here?"

[Illustration: "His Head Hung Low"]

Horace halted, but said nothing. He swung one foot to and fro over the
saw-dust floor.

Stickney had placed his two fat hands palms downward and wide apart on
the table, in the attitude of a butcher facing a customer, but now he
straightened.

"Here," he said, "what's wrong? What's wrong, kid?"

"Nothin'," answered Horace, huskily. He labored for a moment with
something in his throat, and afterwards added, "O'ny----I've----I've
run away, and--"

"Run away!" shouted Stickney. "Run away from what? Who?"

"From----home," answered Horace. "I don't like it there any more.
I----" He had arranged an oration to win the sympathy of the butcher;
he had prepared a table setting forth the merits of his case in the
most logical fashion, but it was as if the wind had been knocked out
of his mind. "I've run away. I----"

Stickney reached an enormous hand over the array of beef, and firmly
grappled th