pointment, my shame? My father would be expecting
me with many questions, my mother waiting for me with hot water and
blankets. What explanation could I give that would not betray my
miserable secret?

It was a chill, dismal afternoon, the Heath deserted, a thin rain
commencing. I slipped off my shirt and jacket, and rolling them under my
arm, trotted off alone, hare and hounds combined in one small carcass,
to chase myself sadly by myself.

I see it still, that pathetically ridiculous little figure, jogging
doggedly over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little
idiot; jumping--sometimes falling into the muddy ditches: it seems
anxious rather than otherwise to get itself into a mess; scrambling
through the dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy paling.
On, on it pants--through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom,
where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell
Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals
it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little rag of a
handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety
to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to
dart across highroads when nobody is looking. And so tear-smeared and
mud-bespattered up the long rise of darkening Crouch End Lane, where
to-night the electric light blazes from a hundred shops, and dead
beat into the Seven Sisters Road station, there to tear off its soaked
jersey; and then home to Poplar, with shameless account of the jolly
afternoon that it has spent, of the admiration and the praise that it
has won.

You poor, pitiful little brat! Popularity? it is a shadow. Turn your
eyes towards it, and it shall ever run before you, escaping you. Turn
your back upon it, walk joyously towards the living sun, and it shall
follow you. Am I not right? Why, then, do you look at me, your little
face twisted into that quizzical grin?

When one takes service with Deceit, one signs a contract that one may
not break but under penalty. Maybe it was good for my health, those
lonely runs; but oh, they were dreary! By a process of argument not
uncommon I persuaded myself that truth was a matter of mere words, that
so long as I had actually gone over the ground I described I was not
lying. To further satisfy my conscience, I bought a big satchel and
scattered from it torn-up paper as I ran.

"And they never catch you?" asked my mother.

"O