quid would be quite
good enough for me, but I don't, and that's straight. If you want to
look for them, I should try one of the doss houses. As likely there as
anywhere."

He slammed the door and Tavernake turned away. A sudden despair had
seized him. He looked up and down the street, he looked away beyond and
thought of the miles and miles of streets, the myriads of chimneys,
the huge branches of the great city stretching far and wide. At eight
o'clock the next morning, he must leave for Southampton. Was it too
late, after all, that he had discovered the truth?

CHAPTER VII. IN A VIRGIN COUNTRY

One night Tavernake began to laugh. He had grown a long brown beard
and the hair was over his ears. He was wearing a gray flannel shirt, a
handkerchief tied around his neck, and a pair of worn riding breeches
held up by a belt. He had kicked his boots off at the end of a long day,
and was lying in the moonlight before a fire of pine logs, whose smoke
went straight to the star-hung sky. No word had been spoken for the last
hour. Tavernake's fit of mirth came with as little apparent reason as
the puffs of wind which every now and then stole down from the mountain
side and made faint music in the virgin forests.

Pritchard turned over on his side and looked at him. Cigars had for many
weeks been an unknown thing, and he was smoking a corn-cob pipe full of
coarse tobacco.

"Stumbled across a joke anywhere?" he asked.

"I'm afraid no one but myself would see the humor of it," Tavernake
answered. "I was thinking of those days in London; I was thinking of
Beatrice's horror when she discovered that I was wearing ready-made
clothes, and the amazement of Elizabeth when she found that I hadn't a
dress suit. It's odd how cramped life gets back there."

Pritchard nodded, pressing the tobacco down into the bowl of his pipe
with his forefinger.

"You're right, Tavernake," he agreed. "One loses one's sense of
proportion. Men in the cities are all alike. They go about in disguise."

"I should like," Tavernake said, inconsequently, "to have Mr. Dowling
out here."

"Amusing fellow?" Pritchard inquired.

Tavernake shook his head, smiling.

"Not in the least," he answered, "only he was a very small man. Out
here it is difficult to keep small. Don't you feel it, Pritchard? These
mountains make our hills at home seem like dust-heaps. The skies seem
loftier. Look down into that valley. It's gigantic, immense."

Pritchard yawn