t material, concrete, it had no worldly,
graspable implications, and his general contempt was not less but
greater. He wished to bring a final justification to his isolation
rather than lose himself in the wide, undistinguished surge of living.

"You'll stop at the Jannans?" his mother queried.

"I think not, probably Sanderson's Hotel, Stephen is giving a ball
to-night for Graham and his wife. I have some important transactions."
Not an echo of his affair with Essie Scofield had, he knew, penetrated
to Myrtle Forge. It was a most fortunate accident. The vulgarity
consequent upon discovery would have been unbearable. Stephen Jannan,
his cousin, a lawyer of wide city connections, must have learned
something of the truth; but Stephen, properly, had said nothing; a
comfortable obscurity had hid him from gabbled scandal. Now, soon, it
would all be over. Unconsciously he drew a deeper breath of relief, of
prospective freedom.

The Hecla, a wooden barrelled engine with a tall, hinged stack, drew its
brigade of canary-coloured chariot cars forward with a rapid bumping
over inequal rails. Jasper Penny's seat, number nineteen, was
fortunately in the centre, close by the stove, where a warmth hung that
failed to reach to the doors. Lost in speculation the journey was both
long and vague. Twilight deepened within the car, and two flickering
candles were lit at either end, their pallid light serving only to cast
thin, climbing shadows over the rocking, box-like interior. At irregular
intervals the train stopped with a succession of subsiding crashes, and
started again at the blowing of a horn; passengers would leave or enter;
or it would prove to be merely a halt to take on cut and piled wood fuel
for the engine.

Finally the train brigade reached the inclined plane leading to the
river and city; the engine was detached, and the cars, fastened to a
hemp cable, were lowered spasmodically to where a team of mules drew
them through a gloomy, covered bridge echoing to the slow hoof falls and
creaking of loose planks. Jasper Penny fastened the elaborate frogs of
his heavily furred overcoat over his injured arm, and with a florid
bandanna wiped the cinders from his silk hat.

The coaches rolled into the station shed, where he changed, taking a
swaying Mulberry Street omnibus to Fourth, and Sanderson's Hotel. It was
a towering, square structure of five stories, with a columned white
portico, and high, divided steps. The clerk, greeti