Though my heart dilated with my good fortune, still was I surrounded by perplexities. As I circled through the city, my thoughts, too, ran in circuits thus: The Widow Platt waited in expectation of payment; I could not obtain money without employment; I could not obtain employment without clothing; could not obtain clothing without money; but could not obtain money, alas, without that first employment; thus bringing me wheeling back to the original circumstance, as greatly vexatious predicaments often chew their own tails.

I had ever considered myself, up until that point, as possessed of a meticulous and even over-fastidious disposition. I was no man of action. Given such a snarled knot of cause and demand to untangle, I had sat and picked the ends with fingernails until the utmost hour, pursuing each strand in its involutions, little realizing that the knot might in one swift motion be cut, Gordian-like, with scimitar and the vigor of self-assurance.

So had I been; but in this hour, I became someone else.

It was my hands first knew my course.

As I passed down an obscure street, I felt spread through all my palms that tingling of the nerves that presages a great leap. I touched my fingers together, and found they sweated, as in the commission of some crime.

I bethought me suddenly upon the fact that I stood not thirty yards from the house where Mr. Gitney’s nephew, Jonathan Gitney, Esq., had lived; the house where Bono’s mother had served in bondage; and musing upon this house, I considered that the last time I had seen Jonathan Gitney, Esq., had been at the Pox Party in the spring; which would suggest that he had evacuated the town and had not, in all probability, returned since the outbreak of hostilities.

Abruptly, at this remembrance, I could not hear the clamor of passing carts. The street seemed tilted in my fancy, and vertiginous, and there was knowledge in my nerves and in the muscles of hand and leg that, having poisoned my master just one day previous, I now would steal from his family; and yet, from this thought, terrible to utter — for which the Lord may forgive me — I felt only giddiness where justice met with pleasure.

I being entailed as their rightful property, thought I, it answers to the dictates of ownership as well as expediency that they should provide me with clothing. Such a solution is only meet.

I suffered the shock of knowledge that this plan was lodged within me and I was indeed going to carry it out. Oft doth reason, enthroned in the pillowed seraglio of the brain, hang back; whereas the flesh, which must walk abroad in the streets, finds its own temerity. Oft do we act, and then inform the governing principles within us of our past action, and leave for them to write their reports and justifications as they will.

I thrilled, knowing my body would now commit this crime.

And at that, the commotion of the street poured in again upon me, and I heard sounds in all their particularity — the striking of hooves, the call of goodwives, the heaving of wood off a cart.

I stood before the door of the house, through which, when I had passed before, I had passed in train with others, and had then been bid to stand silent and serve unless spoken to. The windows were shuttered. I calculated my route into the empty mansion.

I made my way back through the alley to the side door, which led into the kitchen yard. This I found locked, as might be expected.

For a brief moment, I leaned against the door, my hands behind me, as if I lounged; thus situated, I ran my eyes across the windows of the house which stood upon the opposite side of the alley to confirm that they all were dark or shuttered. I steeled myself for activity.

No plunge into water chill with the rush of spring freshets could have administered more sharp a slap to the nerves than my plunge into the acrobatics of larceny: a heel upon the latch; hands grasping the top of the gate — and then me astraddle — and another leap — and I was in.

I crouched there where I had landed for some moments, hands spread upon the turf, reminding myself that I was stealing only from those who claimed to own me. My heart stilled. I was safe, and a thief.

How do we change — within moments, the whole form of our habits and dispositions may become alien to us, and we almost cannot remember what we were. So saith Heraclitus: “The river where you set your foot just now is gone — giving way to this, now this. . . . Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not.”

I did not know who I was become; but I knew this person would be named Augustus, and would be habited in excellent array.