Excerpt from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mr. Smith put his hands on his knees and breathed; labouring, just as much, to bring his emotions under his control, to stop the indignant working of his mouth, which wanted to form—which wanted to shout—words he would not permit it. When his chest no longer heaved, he smiled, experimentally, at the cow, and if the expression resembled a rictus somewhat, a drawing of the lips from the teeth such as a corpse may perform when the strings of the flesh tighten in death, it was, nevertheless, voluntary, which was the only quality he just then required of it. The cow was indifferent.

Then Mr. Smith walked onto the common, past a cricket-pitch worn to bare dirt at the wickets, past a pot kiln and a charcoal-burner's fire and a flock of sheep, and found himself a spot between trees where he could feel as sure as may be that he was not observed; and there, in the security he had not bothered to assure himself of earlier, he turned out the coat pocket where he had kept the pocket-book, and investigated his resources. As he had hoped, some of the paper bills had escaped in his carelessness, and were loose in there. But not many. He smoothed them out one by one, and counted. Five—six—six shillings and six—and eightpence—and this dirty spill was a sixpence too—and another shilling. Eight shillings and eightpence, in the money of—he squinted—New-York and New Jersey. The flimsiness of the paper seemed altogether less entertaining now. Plus, he remembered with a burst of relief, the small pile of veritable coin, which he had left in a heap at his bedside. Twenty-nine shillings odd, where he had reckoned on six times as much. He calculated. Could he live as he had planned? No. He would live as he must.

When he rose from his hiding place, his smile convincing once more, the road running along the far side of the common struck him as somehow familiar-looking, and a minute's walk in that direction confirmed it. It was the Broad Way continuing in the other direction to the one he had set out in. He had circled the whole town; that was New-York, all of it. The far end of the common was blocked with a palisade, and the Broad Way, cobbles diminished into a cart-track, went out through the barrier at another sentry post. At a venture, he asked if the soldier decorating the ground there with spit had seen anyone; anyone running.

"Migh'er done," he said.

Smith studied the expectant face, and considered the state of his pockets.

"You didn't, though, did you," he said.

"No," agreed the soldier, amiably, and stuck his clay pipe back between his teeth.

III

With what sadder steps, and slower, Smith retraced his way, the reader may imagine; how the faces of passers-by, which had formerly expressed a cheerful involvement in their own concerns, now seemed locked tight, so many declarations of secretiveness and guile, not to be trusted; how the city itself, a few minutes before remarkable and new, now appeared provincial and small, rustic and contemptible, absurd in comparison to any metropolis of Europe, et cetera, with a mere delusive shine laid upon it by the morning. Even the savour of fresh bread, once he had returned to the coffee-house, stirred his appetite with less relish. He hesitated at the threshold. He had been out of sight of the window when he was robbed, he calculated. Yet he had run past, and might have been seen. Some customer might have been going in, or coming out, at the critical instant. His catastrophe might have been deduced. Well, well: nothing for it but to spin the wheel, and play.

"Service!" he cried, entering a long low room canopied in smoke, diversified with steam, where men (all men) conversed in a gruff murmur that rose and fell like a masculine sea. At an unoccupied table he bounced into a chair and settled with a wide spread of knees, a confident sprawl of legs, a benignant beaming in all directions.

Excerpted from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. Copyright © 2017 by Francis Spufford. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.