ment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the
wall.

"They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the
lower step and upon the pavement. 'What's up?' asked someone.
'Feet! Look! Feet running!'

"Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along
after the Salvation Army, and this blow not only impeded me but them.
There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost of
bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment
I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with
six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was
no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been
after me.

"Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came
back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the
damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space
and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether.
The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people
perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying
footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a
footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe's
solitary discovery.

"This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a
better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs
hereabouts. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils
were painful from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck
had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I
was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind
man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle
intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left
people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears.
Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across
the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had
caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional
sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose
and curious sniffing, was a terror to me.

"Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and
shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of
my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black
smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my
lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed,
e