lso his days
of unhappiness, that vague hungers and secret unnamable
desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent
public opinion and had not the public opinion of
Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness? Did he
not walk whistling and laughing through Main Street?
Might not one by striking his person strike also the
greater enemy--the thing that smiled and went its own
way--the judgment of Winesburg?

Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his arms were
long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the
downy beard that had begun to grow upon his chin, were
pale almost to whiteness. His teeth protruded from
between his lips and his eyes were blue with the
colorless blueness of the marbles called "aggies" that
the boys of Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer
had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no
friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through
life without friends and he hated the thought.

Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the road with
his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The day was
cold with a raw wind, but presently the sun began to
shine and the road became soft and muddy. The tops of
the ridges of frozen mud that formed the road began to
melt and the mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet
became cold. When he had gone several miles he turned
off the road, crossed a field and entered a wood. In
the wood he gathered sticks to build a fire, by which
he sat trying to warm himself, miserable in body and in
mind.

For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and then,
arising and creeping cautiously through a mass of
underbrush, he went to a fence and looked across fields
to a small farmhouse surrounded by low sheds. A smile
came to his lips and he began making motions with his
long arms to a man who was husking corn in one of the
fields.

In his hour of misery the young merchant had returned
to the farm where he had lived through boyhood and
where there was another human being to whom he felt he
could explain himself. The man on the farm was a
half-witted old fellow named Mook. He had once been
employed by Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the farm
when it was sold. The old man lived in one of the
unpainted sheds back of the farmhouse and puttered
about all day in the fields.

Mook the half-wit lived happily. With childlike faith
he believed in the intelligence of the animals that
lived in the sheds with him, and when he was lonely
held long conversations