it was Asiatic trade, the Panama
Canal, or the Japanese coolie question. It was very exhilarating, this
stimulus of respectful attention accorded him by these prosperous
Eastern men, and before he knew it he was at East Falls.

He was the only person who alighted, and the station was deserted.
Nobody was there expecting anybody. The long twilight of a January
evening was beginning, and the bite of the keen air made him suddenly
conscious that his clothing was saturated with tobacco smoke. He
shuddered involuntarily. Agatha did not tolerate tobacco. He half-moved
to toss the fresh-lighted cigar away, then it was borne in upon him that
this was the old East Falls atmosphere overpowering him, and he resolved
to combat it, thrusting the cigar between his teeth and gripping it with
the firmness of a dozen years of Western resolution.

A few steps brought him into the little main street. The chilly, stilted
aspect of it shocked him. Everything seemed frosty and pinched, just as
the cutting air did after the warm balminess of California. Only several
persons, strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and they favoured
him with incurious glances. They were wrapped in an uncongenial and
frosty imperviousness. His first impression was surprise at his
surprise. Through the wide perspective of twelve years of Western life,
he had consistently and steadily discounted the size and importance of
East Falls; but this was worse than all discounting. Things were more
meagre than he had dreamed. The general store took his breath away.
Countless myriads of times he had contrasted it with his own spacious
emporium, but now he saw that in justice he had overdone it. He felt
certain that it could not accommodate two of his delicatessen counters,
and he knew that he could lose all of it in one of his storerooms.

He took the familiar turning to the right at the head of the street, and
as he plodded along the slippery walk he decided that one of the first
things he must do was to buy sealskin cap and gloves. The thought of
sleighing cheered him for a moment, until, now on the outskirts of the
village, he was sanitarily perturbed by the adjacency of dwelling houses
and barns. Some were even connected. Cruel memories of bitter morning
chores oppressed him. The thought of chapped hands and chilblains was
almost terrifying, and his heart sank at sight of the double
storm-windows, which he knew were solidly fastened and unraisable, while
the sm