“If I go back and pick up that leaf,” he said to himself, “I shall be picking up leaves from these Blacksod pavements till next autumn, when there’ll be so many that it will be impossible!” He began to suffer serious misery from the struggle in his mind.

“If I force myself to leave it there⁠ ⁠… with the idea that I ought to conquer such superstitions⁠ ⁠… won’t it really be that I’m getting out of rescuing it from mere laziness and making this ‘ought’ just my excuse to avoid trouble and bother? I’ll pick it up now,” he concluded, “and think out the principles of the affair later on!” Having made this decision, he hurried back, picked up the leaf, and flung it over the railings after its parent-twig.

But he had forgotten the east wind. That unsympathetic power caught up the leaf, and, whirling it high over Wolf’s head, flung it down upon the rear of a butcher’s cart that was dashing by.