of his journey to the
station, the fruitlessness of his quest, and his opinion of the railway
company, its servants and its methods, he received his candle and went
to bed.

CHAPTER XXVI

A TRAMP, AND OTHER THINGS

He was awakened by a glorious morning, and, looking out of his window,
he saw the street astir in the sunshine, stout men in white flannels
with morning newspapers in their hands, children already on their way to
the beach with spades and buckets, all the morning life of an English
seacoast town in Summer.

Then he dressed. He had no razor, his beard was beginning to show, and
to go about unshaved was impossible to his nature. For a moment the wild
idea of letting his beard grow--that oldest form of disguise--occurred
to him, only to be dismissed immediately. A beard takes a month to grow,
he had neither the time nor the money to do it, nor the inclination.

At breakfast--two kippered herrings and marmalade--he held a council of
war with himself.

Nature has equipped every animal with means for offence and defence. To
man she has given daring, and that strange indifference in cool blood to
danger, when danger has become familiar, which seems the attribute of
man alone.

Jones determined to risk everything, go out, prospect, find some likely
road of escape, and make a bold dash. The eight thousand pounds in the
London Bank shone before him like a galaxy of eight stars; no one knew
of its existence. What he was to do when he had secured it was a matter
for future consideration. Probably he would return right away to the
States.

One great thing about all this Hoover business was the fact that it had
freed him from the haunting dread of those terrible sensations of
duality and negation. Fighting is the finest antidote to nerve troubles
and mental dreads, and he was fighting now for his liberty, for the fact
stood clearly before him, that, whether the Rochester family believed
him to be Rochester or believed him to be Jones, it was to their
interest to hold him as a lunatic in peaceful retirement.

Having breakfasted he lit a cigarette, asked Mrs. Henshaw for a latch
key so that he might not trouble her, put on his panama and went out.
There was a barber's shop across the way, he entered it, found a vacant
chair and was shaved. Then he bought a newspaper and strolled in the
direction of the beach. The idea had come to him that he might be able
to hire a sailing boat and reach London that way,