One beefy part of him suggested that the coppers were too close on the trail and that Lippy knew it; but another part of him, more permanent, more real, deeper, smelt the truth. He himself had suffered dread; he felt vaguely that Lippy knew the cause of that dread, and that for both of them there was something strange about the Thing. The Soul was in trouble.
Oh! James knew it very well. The big bundle under his left arm so weighed upon that primal part of us, which is within, that all the things least desired and most carefully forgotten of his life returned again under its influence and maddened him. With the simplicity of his class, he thought the evil to be attached to the fact that the coat was stolen. Unlike his betters, he had never dreamt that stealing was right. He had always known that it was wrong. … He had a mind to put the Green Overcoat down in the thoroughfare and leave it there. In spite of the risk, he would have done so in another moment had he not heard shuffling footsteps coming up rapidly behind him and felt a soft Polish hand upon his shoulder. It was Lippy.
The Poles when they enter the Second Hand
