get out of here!"

The traveling man left. Raking the samples of collar
fasteners off the counter into a black leather bag, he
ran. He was a small man and very bow-legged and he ran
awkwardly. The black bag caught against the door and he
stumbled and fell. "Crazy, that's what he is--crazy!"
he sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hurried
away.

In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared at each
other. Now that the immediate object of his wrath had
fled, the younger man was embarrassed. "Well, I meant
it. I think we've been queer long enough," he declared,
going to the showcase and replacing the revolver.
Sitting on a barrel he pulled on and fastened the shoe
he had been holding in his hand. He was waiting for
some word of understanding from his father but when
Ebenezer spoke his words only served to reawaken the
wrath in the son and the young man ran out of the store
without replying. Scratching his grey beard with his
long dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with
the same wavering uncertain stare with which he had
confronted the traveling man. "I'll be starched," he
said softly. "Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and
starched!"

Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and along a country
road that paralleled the railroad track. He did not
know where he was going or what he was going to do. In
the shelter of a deep cut where the road, after turning
sharply to the right, dipped under the tracks he
stopped and the passion that had been the cause of his
outburst in the store began to again find expression.
"I will not be queer--one to be looked at and listened
to," he declared aloud. "I'll be like other people.
I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out. I'll
show him!"

The distraught young man stood in the middle of the
road and glared back at the town. He did not know the
reporter George Willard and had no special feeling
concerning the tall boy who ran about town gathering
the town news. The reporter had merely come, by his
presence in the office and in the printshop of the
Winesburg Eagle, to stand for something in the young
merchant's mind. He thought the boy who passed and
repassed Cowley & Son's store and who stopped to talk
to people in the street must be thinking of him and
perhaps laughing at him. George Willard, he felt,
belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in
his person the spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could
not have believed that George Willard had a