.

'D--d if I don't go to Turnhill,' he said to himself, slowly and
calmly, as he paid for the second glass of beer.

He crossed the station by the subway and waited for the loop-line train
to Turnhill. He had not set foot in the Five Towns for three-and-twenty
years, having indeed carefully and continuously avoided it, as a man
will avoid the street where his creditor lives. But he discovered no
change in Knype railway-station. And he had a sort of pleasure in the
fact that he knew his way about it, knew where the loop-line trains
started from and other interesting little details. Even the special
form of the loop-line time-table, pasted here and there on the walls of
the station, had not varied since his youth. (We return Radicals to
Parliament, but we are proud of a railway which for fine old English
conservatism brooks no rival.)

Toby gazed around, half challengingly and half nervously--it was
conceivable that he might be recognized, or might recognize. But no!
Not a soul in the vast, swaying, preoccupied, luggage-laden crowds gave
him a glance. As for him, although he fully recognized nobody, yet
nearly every face seemed to be half-familiar. He climbed into a
second-class compartment when the train drew up, and ten other people,
all with third-class tickets, followed his example; three persons were
already seated therein. The compartment was illuminated by one lamp,
and in the Bleakridge Tunnel this lamp expired. Everything reminded him
of his youth.

In twenty minutes he was leaving Turnhill station and entering the
town. It was about nine o'clock, and colder than winters of the period
usually are. The first thing he saw was an electric tram, and the
second thing he saw was another electric tram. In Toby's time there
were no trams at Turnhill, and the then recently-introduced steam-trams
between Bursley and Longshaw, long since superseded, were regarded as
the final marvel of science as applied to traction. And now there were
electric trams at Turnhill! The railway renewed his youth, but this
darting electricity showed him how old he was. The Town Hall, which was
brand-new when he left Turnhill, had the look of a mediaeval hotel de
ville as he examined it in the glamour of the corporation's
incandescent gas. And it was no more the sole impressive pile in the
borough. The High Street and its precincts abounded in impressive
piles. He did not know precisely what they were, but they had the
appearance of being