But he was torn with indecision.

How to leave Louie--what to do with himself without a farthing in the world--whom to go to for advice?
He thought often of Mr.Ancrum, but a fierce distaste for chapels and ministers had been growing on him, and he had gradually seen less and less of the man who had been the kind comrade and teacher of his early childhood.

His only real companions during this year of moody adolescence were his books.

From the forgotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs, which had yielded 'Paradise Lost,' he drew other treasures by degrees.

He found there, in all, some tattered leaves--three or four books altogether--of Pope's 'Iliad,' about half of Foxe's 'Martyrs'-- the rest having been used apparently by the casual nurses, who came to tend Reuben's poor mother in her last days, to light the fire--a complete copy of Locke 'On the Human Understanding,' and various volumes of old Calvinist sermons, which he read, partly because his reading appetite was insatiable, partly from a half-contemptuous desire to find out what it might be that Uncle Reuben was always troubling his head about.
As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for many long weeks after the scene which had led to the adventure of the Pool.