“Well, the train will leave at noon.  I’ll send for you when we want you again.  Good-by!”

“Good-by!”

Ralph went down the steps, out at the door, and across the court-house yard.  He was not sure that he struck into the right street to go to the station, there were so many streets radiating from the court-house square.  But it did not much matter; there was plenty of time before the train would start, and he thought he would like to walk about a little, and see something of the city.  He felt like walking off, too, a feeling of dissatisfaction concerning what had just been done in court.  It was too much in the nature of an adverse proceeding to seem quite right to him; he was fearful that, somehow, it would estrange his mother from him.  He thought there ought to be some simpler way to restore him to his family, some way in which he and his mother could act jointly and in undoubted harmony.  He hoped it would all come out right, though.  He did not know what better he could do, at any rate, than to follow the advice of his lawyer; and, besides that, he had promised to obey him implicitly in this matter, and he must keep his promise.  He had no thought that he was being used merely as an instrument in the hands of designing men.

It was with this vague feeling of unrest at his heart, and with his mind occupied by uneasy thought, that he walked leisurely down the street of this strange city, paying little attention to his course, or to what was going on around him.

Finally he thought it was time he should have reached the station, or at least made some attempt to find it; so he quickened his steps a little, and looked out ahead of him.

There was a man standing on the next corner, and Ralph stopped and asked him if he was on the right road to get to the station.  The man laughed good-naturedly, and told him he was on the right road to get away from it, and advised him to retrace his steps for four blocks, then to go two blocks to the left, and there he would find a street running diagonally across the town, which, if he would follow it, would take him very near to the station.  He would have to hurry, too, the man said, if he wanted to catch the noon train.

So Ralph turned back, counting the blocks as he went, turning at the right place, and coming, at last, to the street described.  But, instead of one street running diagonally from this point there were two or three; and Ralph did not know which one to follow.  He asked a boy, who was passing by with a basket on his shoulder, where the station was, and the boy, bending his neck and looking at him, said,—­

“I guess this’s the way you want to go, sonny,” pointing down one of the streets, as he spoke, and then whistling a merry tune as he trudged on with his burden.