never felt at liberty to leave off so long as a man was recognizable
in the street by daylight. But now at last, with a sigh of relief,
he rose. The hour of his redemption was come, the moment of it at
hand. Outwardly calm, he was within eager as a lover to reach Lucky
Croale's back parlour. His hand trembled with expectation as he
laid from it the awl, took from between his knees the great boot on
the toe of which he had been stitching a patch, lifted the yoke of
his leather apron over his head, and threw it aside. With one hasty
glance around, as if he feared some enemy lurking near to prevent
his escape, he caught up a hat which looked as if it had been
brushed with grease, pulled it on his head with both hands, stepped
out quickly, closed the door behind him, turned the key, left it in
the lock, and made straight for his earthly paradise--but with
chastened step. All Mistress Croale's customers made a point of
looking decent in the street--strove, in their very consciousness,
to carry the expression of being on their way to their tea, not
their toddy--or if their toddy, then not that they desired it, but
merely that it was their custom always of an afternoon: man had no
choice--he must fill space, he must occupy himself; and if so, why
not Mistress Croale's the place, and the consumption of whisky the
occupation? But alas for their would-be seeming indifference!
Everybody in the lane, almost in the Widdiehill, knew every one of
them, and knew him for what he was; knew that every drop of toddy he
drank was to him as to a miser his counted sovereign; knew that, as
the hart for the water-brooks, so thirsted his soul ever after
another tumbler; that he made haste to swallow the last drops of the
present, that he might behold the plenitude of the next steaming
before him; that, like the miser, he always understated the amount
of the treasure he had secured, because the less he acknowledged,
the more he thought he could claim.

George was a tall man, of good figure, loosened and bowed. His face
was well favoured, but not a little wronged by the beard and dirt of
a week, through which it gloomed haggard and white. Beneath his
projecting black brows, his eyes gleamed doubtful, as a wood-fire
where white ash dims the glow. He looked neither to right nor left,
but walked on with moveless dull gaze, noting nothing.

"Yon's his ain warst enemy," said the kindly grocer-wife, as he
passed her door.

"Ay," respond