He pondered frequently on his spasmodic debauch, repeating, as well as memory permitted, all his absurdities of speech and action.  Defiant self-justification was now far to seek.  On the other hand, he perceived very clearly how easy it would be for him to lapse by degrees of weakened will into a ruinous dissoluteness.  Anything of that kind would mean, of course, the abandonment of his ambitions.  All he had to fight the world with was his brain; and only by incessant strenuousness in its exercise had he achieved the moderate prominence declared in yesterday’s ceremony.  By birth, by station, he was of no account; if he chose to sink, no influential voice would deplore his falling off or remind him of what he owed to himself.  Chilvers, now—­what a wide-spreading outcry, what calling upon gods and men, would be excited by any defection of that brilliant youth!  Godwin Peak must make his own career, and that he would hardly do save by efforts greater than the ordinary man can put forth.  The ordinary man?—­Was he in any respect extraordinary? were his powers noteworthy?  It was the first time that he had deliberately posed this question to himself, and for answer came a rush of confident blood, pulsing through all the mechanism of his being.

The train of thought which occupied him during this long trudge was to remain fixed in his memory; in any survey of the years of pupilage this recollection would stand prominently forth, associated, moreover, with one slight incident which at the time seemed a mere interruption of his musing.  From a point on the high-road he observed a small quarry, so excavated as to present an interesting section; though weary, he could not but turn aside to examine these strata.  He knew enough of the geology of the county to recognise the rocks and reflect with understanding upon their position; a fragment in his hand, he sat down to rest for a moment.  Then a strange fit of brooding came over him.  Escaping from the influences of personality, his imagination wrought back through eras of geologic time, held him in a vision of the infinitely remote, shrivelled into insignificance all but the one fact of inconceivable duration.  Often as he had lost himself in such reveries, never yet had he passed so wholly under the dominion of that awe which attends a sudden triumph of the pure intellect.  When at length he rose, it was with wide, blank eyes, and limbs partly numbed.  These needed half-an-hour’s walking before he could recover his mood of practical self-search.

Until the last moment he could not decide whether to let his mother know how he had reached Twybridge.  His arrival corresponded pretty well with that of a train by which he might have come.  But when the door opened to him, and the familiar faces smiled their welcome, he felt that he must have nothing to do with paltry deceit; he told of his walk, explaining it by the simple fact that this morning he had found himself short of money.  How that came to pass, no one inquired.  Mrs. Peak, shocked at such martyrdom, tended him with all motherly care; for once, Godwin felt that it was good to have a home, however simple.