f which was part of his
normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
able to go his way unheeded.

On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for
the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'
time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
possible for them to know now that he was lurking ou