other calculations.
The night watchman was sixty years old and wanted to
retire. He had been a soldier in the Civil War and drew
a small pension. He hoped to find some new method of
making a living and aspired to become a professional
breeder of ferrets. Already he had four of the
strangely shaped savage little creatures, that are used
by sportsmen in the pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar
of his house. "Now I have one male and three females,"
he mused. "If I am lucky by spring I shall have twelve
or fifteen. In another year I shall be able to begin
advertising ferrets for sale in the sporting papers."

The nightwatchman settled into his chair and his mind
became a blank. He did not sleep. By years of practice
he had trained himself to sit for hours through the
long nights neither asleep nor awake. In the morning he
was almost as refreshed as though he had slept.

With Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the chair behind
the stove only three people were awake in Winesburg.
George Willard was in the office of the Eagle
pretending to be at work on the writing of a story but
in reality continuing the mood of the morning by the
fire in the wood. In the bell tower of the Presbyterian
Church the Reverend Curtis Hartman was sitting in the
darkness preparing himself for a revelation from God,
and Kate Swift, the school teacher, was leaving her
house for a walk in the storm.

It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out and the
walk was unpremeditated. It was as though the man and
the boy, by thinking of her, had driven her forth into
the wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone to
the county seat concerning some business in connection
with mortgages in which she had money invested and
would not be back until the next day. By a huge stove,
called a base burner, in the living room of the house
sat the daughter reading a book. Suddenly she sprang to
her feet and, snatching a cloak from a rack by the
front door, ran out of the house.

At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in
Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complexion was not
good and her face was covered with blotches that
indicated ill health. Alone in the night in the winter
streets she was lovely. Her back was straight, her
shoulders square, and her features were as the features
of a tiny goddess on a pedestal in a garden in the dim
light of a summer evening.

During the afternoon the school teacher had been to see
Doctor Welling concerning her heal