He stopped and, turning, looked back. He saw the girl bend down and

put a hand on Wallie Sayre's shoulder, and the boy's face upturned and

looking into hers. He shook himself and went on. After all, that was

best. He felt no anger now. She deserved better than to be used to help

a man work out his salvation. She deserved youth, and joyousness, and

the forgetfulness that comes with time. She was already forgetting.

He smiled again as he went on up the street, but his hands as he

buttoned his overcoat were shaking.

It was shortly after that that he met the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe. He

passed him quickly, but he was conscious that the clergyman had stopped

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and was staring after him. Half an hour later, sitting in the empty

smoker of the train, he wondered if he had not missed something there.

Perhaps the church could have helped him, a good man's simple belief in

right and wrong. He was wandering in a gray no-man's land, without faith

or compass.

David had given him the location of Bassett's apartment house, and he

found it quickly. He was in a state of nervous irritability by that

time, for the sense of being a fugitive was constantly stressed in the

familiar streets by the danger of recognition. It was in vain that

he argued with himself that only the police were interested in his

movements, and the casual roundsman not at all. He found himself shying

away from them like a nervous horse.

But if he expected any surprise from Bassett he was disappointed. He

greeted him as if he had seen him yesterday, and explained his lack of

amazement in his first words.

"Doctor Livingstone telephoned me. Sit down, man, and let me look at

you. You've given me more trouble than any human being on earth."

"Sorry," Dick said awkwardly, "I seem to have a faculty of involving

other people in my difficulties."

"Want a drink?"

"No, thanks. I'll smoke, if you have any tobacco. I've been afraid to

risk a shop."

Bassett talked cheerfully as he found cigarettes and matches. "The old

boy had a different ring to his voice to-night. He was going down pretty

fast, Livingstone; was giving up the fight. But I fancy you've given

him a new grip on the earth." When they were seated, however, a sort of

awkwardness developed. To Dick, Bassett had been a more or less shadowy

memory, clouded over with the details and miseries of the flight. And

Bassett found Dick greatly altered. He was older than he remembered him.

The sort of boyishness which had come with the resurrection of his early

identity had gone, and the man who sat before him was grave, weary, and

much older. But his gaze was clear and direct.




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