No, I won't go home now.

I'll stop around to Elder's, and get a cut of roast beef." Wilkinson had taken up his hat, and was moving down the store, when a suggestion that came to his mind made him pause.

It was this: "But is not Mary waiting for me, and will not my absence for the whole day cause her intense anxiety and alarm?
I ought to go home." And now began an argument in his thoughts.

The fact was, a sense of exhaustion of body and depression of spirits had followed the effort and trouble of the day, and Wilkinson felt a much stronger desire for something stimulating to drink than he did for food.

Elder's was a drinking as well as an eating-house; and in deciding to go there, instead of returning home, the real influence, although he did not perceive it to be so, was the craving felt for a glass of brandy.