He did not put to himself the plain alternative:  Shall I keep the money, or shall I give it up?  He merely let a series of reflections pass over his mind, as he lay back on the cushioned seat, experiencing an agreeable drowsiness.  At the moment of finding the note, he would have handed it over to his employer without a thought; it would perhaps not even have occurred to him to regret that it was not his own.  But during the last three hours a singular chain of circumstances had led to this result:  it was just as possible as not that Hood would keep the coins in his pocket and say nothing about them.

It was time to go to the train.  Almost with the first moving of the carriages he fell into a doze.  A sense of mental uneasiness roused him now and then, but only for a few moments together; he slumbered on till Dunfield was reached.

At the entrance to the mill he was in fierce conflict with himself.  As is usually the case in like circumstances, the sleepy journey had resulted in bodily uneasiness; he had a slight headache, was thirsty, felt indisposed to return to work.  When he had all but crossed the threshold, he turned sharply back, and entered a little public-house a few yards away; an extraordinary thing for him to do, but he felt that a small glass of spirits would help him to quieter nerves, or at all events would sustain his unusual exhilaration till the interview with Dagworthy was over.  At the very door of the office he had not decided whether it should be silence or restitution.

‘That you, Hood?’ Dagworthy asked, looking up from a letter he was writing.  ‘Been rather a long time, haven’t you?’

The tone was unusually indulgent.  Hood felt an accession of confidence; he explained naturally the cause of his delay.

‘All right,’ was the reply, as Dagworthy took the note which his correspondent had sent.

Hood was in his own room, and—­the money was still in his pocket....

He did not set out to walk home with his usual cheerfulness that evening.  His headache had grown worse, and he wished, wished at every step he took, that the lie he had to tell to his wife was over and done with.  There was no repentance of the decision which, it seemed on looking back, he had arrived at involuntarily.  The coin which made his pocket heavy meant joy to those at home, and, if he got it wrongfully, the wrong was so dubious, so shadowy, that it vanished in comparison with the good that would be done.  It was not—­he said to himself—­as if he had committed a theft to dissipate the proceeds, like that young fellow who ran away from the Dunfield and County Bank some months ago, and was caught in London with disreputable associates.  Here was a ten-pound note lying, one might say, by the very roadside, and it would save a family from privation.  Abstractly, it was wrong; yes, it was wrong; but would abstract right feed him and pay his rent for the year to come?  Hood had reached this stage in his self-examination; he strengthened himself by protest against the order of things.  His headache nursed the tendency to an active discontent, to which, as a rule, his temperament did not lend itself.