field and ice-rimmed lake.

V

Champney Googe left the shed with the rest; no one spoke to him,
although many a curious look was turned his way when he had passed, and
he spoke to no one. He waited for a car to Flamsted. There he got out.
He found a restaurant near The Greenbush and ordered something to eat.
Afterwards he went about the town, changed almost beyond recognition. He
saw no face he knew. There were foreigners everywhere--men who were to
be the fathers of the future American race. A fairly large opera house
attracted his attention; it was evidently new. He looked for the
year--1901. A little farther on he found the hall, built, so he had
gathered from the few words among the men in the sheds, by Mr. Van
Ostend. The name was on the lintel: "Flamsted Quarries Hall." Every few
minutes an electric tram went whizzing through Main Street towards The
Bow. Crowds of young people were on the street.

He looked upon all he saw almost indifferently, feeling little, caring
little. It was as if a mental and spiritual numbness had possession of
every faculty except the manual; he felt at home only while he was
working for that short half-hour in the shed. He was not at ease here
among this merry careless crowd. He stopped to look in at the windows of
a large fine shop for fruits and groceries; he glanced up at the
sign:--"Poggi and Company."

"Poggi--Poggi" he said to himself; he was thinking it out. "Luigi
Poggi--Luigi--Ah!" It was a long-drawn breath. He had found his clew.

He heard again that cry: "Champney,--O Champney! what has he done to
you!" The night came back to him in all its detail. It sickened him.

He was about to turn from the window and seek the quiet of The Bow until
the hall should be open--at "sharp seven" he heard the men say--when a
woman passed him and entered the shop. She took a seat at the counter
just inside the show-window. He stood gazing at her, unable to move his
eyes from the form, the face. It was she--Aileen!

The sickening feeling increased for a moment, then it gave place to
strange electric currents that passed and repassed through every nerve.
It was a sensation as if his whole body--flesh, muscles, nerves,
arteries, veins, every lobe of his brain, every cell within each lobe,
had been, as the saying is of an arm or leg, "asleep" and was now
"coming to." The tingling sensation increased almost to torture; but he
could not move. That face held him.

He must get away before