el more
utterly alone.

For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_
the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.

It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he
admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
all, it would be to try to creep back into it.

The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again
like a wandering ghost--sped on.

But h