Lysander Letts left Waldstricker's office highly pleased. He was going to see Tess, and he had twenty-five dollars in his pocket. In the long hours of silent meditation in prison, he'd tried to outline that meeting, and to figure out how he could work Waldstricker. His errand provided for both contingencies.
He swaggered along the street, bumped into people roughly, and for his rudeness gave them oaths instead of apologies. At an inlet saloon, he displayed his money ostentatiously, and bought many drinks for himself and the "setters." The squatter's capacity for the Rhine whiskey had been impaired by his imprisonment, and it was not long before he began to feel the effects of his liquor. A full pint in his hip pocket, Sandy, finally, broke away from his companions and started up the railroad tracks for the Silent City. Staggering a little, he meditated with drunken seriousness what he had done and was going to do.
Famished by his detention in prison, he hungered for the sight of Tess. All the fierce passion of his undisciplined nature clamored for her. And when he had her, he'd carry out all the brutalities conceived in the long nights in his cell. He'd find out the father of her boy. If that duffer, Waldstricker, could discover it, he could. He'd make Tess tell. He'd show Young, too. He'd get even with the lawyer for helping send him to Auburn. His grievance grew more active every step he carried his load of liquor through the broiling sun, the long four miles from Ithaca.
"Wait till I get 'em," he muttered over and over, "I'll show 'em what's what."
Before he reached the lane leading past Young's place to the Skinner shack, he left the tracks and climbed the fence. Throwing his legs over the top, he sat down to enjoy the breeze which blew from the green lake, and, vibrating the leaves and bowing the shrubs and grasses, swept up and over the hill into the illimitable space beyond. Sandy wanted another drink, and reached back to his hip for it. The bottle stuck in the pocket and he jerked at it savagely. He pulled it out, but he, also, lost his balance, and in his efforts to save himself from falling, smashed the bottle on the top rail of the fence. The whiskey ran down to the ground and the thirsty moss drank it up.
Letts gazed at the jagged-edged glass in his hand, stupefied by the magnitude of his calamity. Then he drew a long breath and cursed his luck. He cursed the bottle, the fence, the whiskey, Waldstricker, who'd sent him, and Tess and the unknown man, on whose account he'd been sent. His maledictions included everything except his own drunken clumsiness.