There is nothing very imposing in the first stirring of a
great city's activities; it is a slow reluctant process, like the waking
of a heavy sleeper; but to Woburn's mood the sight of that obscure renewal
of humble duties was more moving than the spectacle of an army with
banners.
He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in his case, and murmuring
to himself a line from Hamlet--the saddest, he thought, in the play--
_For every man hath business and desire_.
Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him feel the pressure of Ruby
Glenn's revolver in his pocket; it was like a devil's touch on his arm,
and he sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just four dollars
and fifty cents; but that didn't matter now. He had no thought of flight.
For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the park; then the cold drove
him on again, and with the rapidity born of a sudden resolve he began to
walk down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He brushed past a maid-
servant who was washing the vestibule and ran up stairs to his room. A
fire was burning in the grate and his books and photographs greeted him
cheerfully from the walls; the tranquil air of the whole room seemed to
take it for granted that he meant to have his bath and breakfast and go
down town as usual.
He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of his pocket; for some
moments he held it curiously in his hand, bending over to examine it as
Ruby Glenn had done; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small cabinet,
and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire.
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