When it became light enough I explored the old house, finding nothing but rags and old papers. There was no water in it and washing was out of the question. I gathered up an armful of the rags and papers, making a pallet of them by a window upstairs in a front room, where I could look out on the street. I sat down on the pallet and began to think things over. It was the first good chance since I had left my father. I heartily wished myself back with him. If this was adventure I wanted no more of it. I was done with it. It had brought me to this. Tired, hungry, bloody, afraid to go to sleep even if I could, lest I should be found and dragged off to jail and surely convicted. Smiler was dead. I had no ties to bind me to the road.

Yes, I would get out of this mess somehow and go back to my father. I was sorry for poor Smiler and would have stayed with him on the road, but now it was different. I felt no remorse for any of the things we had done. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t even think they were wrong. That phase of it never entered my mind.