nically
put his fingers, in search of the necessary money, where his waistcoat
pocket should have been. But here the cotton gown, which had nobly
stood by him so far, and which he had basely forgotten, intervened, and
frustrated his efforts. In a sort of nightmare he struggled with the
strange uncanny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all muscular
strivings to water, and laugh at him all the time; while other
travellers, forming up in a line behind, waited with impatience,
making suggestions of more or less value and comments of more or less
stringency and point. At last--somehow--he never rightly understood
how--he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all
waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found--not only no money,
but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!

To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat
behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys,
watch, matches, pencil-case--all that makes life worth living, all that
distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the
inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about
permissively, unequipped for the real contest.

In his misery he made one desperate effort to carry the thing off, and,
with a return to his fine old manner--a blend of the Squire and the
College Don--he said, 'Look here! I find I've left my purse behind. Just
give me that ticket, will you, and I'll send the money on to-morrow? I'm
well-known in these parts.'

The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then
laughed. 'I should think you were pretty well known in these parts,'
he said, 'if you've tried this game on often. Here, stand away from the
window, please, madam; you're obstructing the other passengers!'

An old gentleman who had been prodding him in the back for some moments
here thrust him away, and, what was worse, addressed him as his good
woman, which angered Toad more than anything that had occurred that
evening.

Baffled and full of despair, he wandered blindly down the platform where
the train was standing, and tears trickled down each side of his nose.
It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and almost of
home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shillings and by
the pettifogging mistrustfulness of paid officials. Very soon his escape
would be discovered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught,