de me raise my eyes to the house opposite,
and there at a first-floor window was a face. As the loafer passed he
looked up, and I fancied a signal was exchanged.

I crossed the street, whistling gaily and imitating the jaunty swing of
the milkman. Then I took the first side street, and went up a
left-hand turning which led past a bit of vacant ground. There was no
one in the little street, so I dropped the milk-cans inside the
hoarding and sent the cap and overall after them. I had only just put
on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner. I gave him good
morning and he answered me unsuspiciously. At the moment the clock of
a neighbouring church struck the hour of seven.

There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to Euston Road I
took to my heels and ran. The clock at Euston Station showed five
minutes past the hour. At St Pancras I had no time to take a ticket,
let alone that I had not settled upon my destination. A porter told me
the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train already in motion.
Two station officials blocked the way, but I dodged them and clambered
into the last carriage.

Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels,
an irate guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket to
Newton-Stewart, a name which had suddenly come back to my memory, and
he conducted me from the first-class compartment where I had ensconced
myself to a third-class smoker, occupied by a sailor and a stout woman
with a child. He went off grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I
observed to my companions in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job
catching trains. I had already entered upon my part.

'The impidence o' that gyaird!' said the lady bitterly. 'He needit a
Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin' o' this wean
no haein' a ticket and her no fower till August twalmonth, and he was
objectin' to this gentleman spittin'.'

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an atmosphere
of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a week ago I had
been finding the world dull.

CHAPTER THREE

The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper

I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May
weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked myself
why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London and not got
the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face the restaurant
car, but I got a l