roof, and a toy engine panting importantly in front of its one tiny
baggage-and-passenger coach, with a freight car for ballast.

Jack threw back his shoulders and took a long, deep, satisfying
breath. He looked around him gloatingly and climbed into the little
make-believe train, and smiled as he settled back in a seat. There was
not another soul going to Quincy that morning, save the conductor and
engineer. The conductor looked at his passenger as boredly as the wife
of a professional humorist looks at her husband, took his ticket and
left him.

Jack lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke out of the open window
while the little train bore him down through the green forest into the
valley. He was in a new world. He was safe here--he was lost.




CHAPTER FOUR

JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN POSSESSION OF A JOB


Writing his name on the hotel register was an embarrassing ceremony
that had not occurred to Jack until he walked up the steps and into
the bare little office. Some instinct of pride made him shrink from
taking a name that did not belong to him, and he was afraid to write
his own in so public a place. So he ducked into the dining room whence
came the muffled clatter of dishes and an odor of fried beefsteak, as
a perfectly plausible means of dodging the issue for a while.