To his morbid inner sense the boy seemed to have entered irrevocably on the broad path which leadeth to destruction.
Perhaps in another year he would be drinking and thieving.

With a curious fatalism Reuben felt that for the present, and till he had made some tangible amends to Sandy and the Unseen Powers for Hannah's sin, he himself could do nothing.

His hands were unclean.
But some tremulous passing hopes he allowed himself to build on this new prophet.
Meanwhile, David heard the town-talk, and took small account of it.
He supposed he should see the new-comer at Jerry's in time.

Then if folk spoke true there would be a shindy worth joining in.
Meanwhile, the pressure of his own affairs made the excitement of the neighbourhood seem to him one more of those storms in the Dissenting tea-cup, of which, boy as he was, he had known a good many already.
One September evening he was walking down to Clough End, bound to the reading-room.

He had quite ceased to attend the 'Crooked Cow.' His pennies were precious to him now, and he saved them jealously, wondering scornfully sometimes how he could ever have demeaned himself so far as to find excitement in the liquor or the company of the 'Cow.' Half-way down to the town, as he was passing the foundry, whence he had drawn the pan which had for so long made the smithy enchanted ground to him, the big slouching appprentice who had been his quondam friend and ally there, came out of the foundry yard just in front of him.