I concluded that I
had better go on, though Mr. Pfeiffer regretted that he never paid his
hands in the middle of the month. It appeared afterward that he
objected likewise to paying them at the end of the month, or at the
beginning of the next. He owes me two days' wages yet.
At sunset on the second day after my desertion of Pfeiffer I walked
across a footbridge into a city with many spires, in one of which a
chime of bells rang out a familiar tune. The city was New Brunswick.
I turned down a side street where two stone churches stood side by
side. A gate in the picket fence had been left open, and I went in
looking for a place to sleep. Back in the churchyard I found what I
sought in the brownstone slab covering the tomb of, I know now, an old
pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, who died full of wisdom and grace.
I am afraid that I was not over-burdened with either, or I might have
gone to bed with a full stomach, too, instead of chewing the last of
the windfall apples that had been my diet on my two days' trip; but if
he slept as peacefully under the slab as I slept on it, he was doing
well. I had for once a dry bed, and brownstone keeps warm long after
the sun has set.
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