transferring his belongings to the new pockets, he paid down the
purchase price and fled to the subway.

When he reached the pier at the foot of Fourteenth Street he saw that
the steamer was still in midstream and it would be several minutes
before she warped in to the dock. He had no pass from the steamship
office, but on showing his newspaperman's card the official admitted him
to the pier, and he took his stand at the first cabin gangway, trembling
a little with nervousness, but with a pleasant feeling of excitement no
less. He gazed at the others waiting for arriving travellers and
wondered whether any of the peers of American letters had come to meet
the poet. A stoutish, neatly dressed gentleman with a gray moustache
looked like Mr. Howells, and he thrilled again. It was hardly possible
that he, the obscure reviewer, was the only one who had been notified of
Verne's arrival. That tall, hawk-faced man whose limousine was purring
outside must be a certain publisher he knew by sight.

What would these gentlemen say when they learned that the poet was to
stay with Kenneth Stockton, in New Utrecht? He rolled up the
mustard-coloured trousers one more round--they were much too long for
him--and watched the great hull slide along the side of the pier with a
peculiar tingling shudder that he had not felt since the day of his
wedding.

He expected no difficulty in recognizing Finsbury Verne, for he was very
familiar with his photograph. As the passengers poured down the
slanting gangway, all bearing the unmistakable air and stamp of
superiority that marks those who have just left the sacred soil of
England, he scanned the faces with an eye of keen regard. To his
surprise he saw the gentlemen he had marked respectively as Mr. Howells