He tried to forget that man slipping down in the embrace of his
friend. It was too horrible to be true. It must have been a trick just
to scare the boys. The world was full of joshers--Jack knew half a
dozen men capable of playing that trick, just to turn the joke. For a
few minutes he was optimistic, almost making himself believe that the
man had not been shot, after all. The fading effect of the wines he
had drunk sent his mood swinging from the depths of panicky anguish
over the horrible affair, to a senseless optimism that refused to see
disaster when it stood by his side.

He tried again to decide where he should go from San Francisco. He
tried to remember all that he had ever heard about the various
paradises for sportsmen, and he discovered that he could not remember
anything except that they were all in the mountains, and that Tahoe
was a big lake, and lots of people went there in the summer. He
crossed Tahoe off the list, because he did not want to land in some
fashionable resort and bump into some one he knew. Besides, thirty-one
dollars would not last long at a summer resort--and he remembered he
would not have thirty-one dollars when he landed; he would have what
was left after he had paid his fare from San Francisco, and had eaten
once or twice.

Straightway he became hungry, perhaps because a porter came down the
aisle announcing the interesting fact that breakfast was now being
served in the diner--fourth car rear. Jack felt as though he could
eat about five dollars' worth of breakfast. He was only a month or so
past twenty-two, remember, and he himself had not committed any crime
save the crime of foolishness.