, with a freight car for ballast.

Jack threw back his shoulders and took a long, deep, satisfying
breath. He looked around him gloatingly and climbed into the little
make-believe train, and smiled as he settled back in a seat. There was
not another soul going to Quincy that morning, save the conductor and
engineer. The conductor looked at his passenger as boredly as the wife
of a professional humorist looks at her husband, took his ticket and
left him.

Jack lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke out of the open window
while the little train bore him down through the green forest into the
valley. He was in a new world. He was safe here--he was lost.

CHAPTER FOUR

JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN POSSESSION OF A JOB

Writing his name on the hotel register was an embarrassing ceremony
that had not occurred to Jack until he walked up the steps and into
the bare little office. Some instinct of pride made him shrink from
taking a name that did not belong to him, and he was afraid to write
his own in so public a place. So he ducked into the dining room whence
came the muffled clatter of dishes and an odor of fried beefsteak, as
a perfectly plausible means of dodging the issue for a while.

He ate as slowly as he dared and as long as he could swallow, and when
he left was lucky enough to find the office occupied only by a big
yellow cat curled up on the desk with the pen between its paws. It
seemed a shame to disturb the cat. He went by it on his toes and
passed on down the steps and into the full face of the town lying
there cupped in green hills and with a sunshiny quiet that made the
world seem farther away than ever.

A couple of men were walking down the street and stopping now and then
to talk to those they met. Jack followed aimlessly, his hands in his
pockets, his new Stetson--that did not look so unusual here in
Quincy--pulled well down over his eyebrows and giving his face an
unaccustomed look of purposefulness. Those he met carried letters and
papers in their hands; those he followed went empty handed, so Jack
guessed that he was observing the regular morning pilgrimage to the
postoffice--which, had he only known it, really begins the day in
Quincy.

He did not expect any mail, of course; but there seemed nothing else
for him to do, no other place for him to go; and he was afraid that if
he stayed around the hotel some one might ask him to register. He
went, therefore, to the postoffice and stood just outsi