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It was not, he was thinking as he trudged along, a very inspiriting morning on which to arrive in a strange place. Perhaps if the sun had been shining Amesville would have seemed less gloomy and inhospitable to him, but as it was he found nothing to like about the city. On the contrary, he was convinced that it was far inferior in every way to Akron and that he would never care for it, no matter how long he stayed there. However, he forgot to take into consideration the fact that he was tired and hungry and cold, neglected to realise that almost any city, approached from its least attractive quarter and viewed in the dim light of a cloudy Winter morning, looks far from its best.

He set his valise down at a corner, rubbed his chilled fingers, and went on once more with his burden in the other hand. He was wondering now what Aunt Sarah would prove to be like. He had never seen her to remember her, although his mother had tried to recall to his recollection an occasion when Aunt Sarah had visited them in Akron. But that had been when he was only four or five years old and his memory failed him. Aunt Sarah was not a real, bona-fide aunt, for she was his mother’s half-sister. But she was the closest relative there was and when it had become necessary to break up the home in Akron it was Aunt Sarah who had written and offered to take them in. There would be practically no money left after his father’s affairs had been settled up and all the bills paid, and Mrs. Faulkner had been very glad to accept Aunt Sarah’s hospitality for her son. She herself had obtained, through the influence of a friend of her husband’s, the position of housekeeper in a hotel in Columbus. Since her son could not be with her she had decreed that he was to go to Amesville, finish his schooling there, and remain with Aunt Sarah until enough money had been saved to allow of the establishment of a new home. He had pleaded hard to be allowed to leave high school and find work in Columbus, but Mrs. Faulkner wouldn’t hear of it.