would pass with it, that for the rest of my life I should never
deserve the slightest respect or any woman's love. Pride kept me
to my purpose between my gusts of passion.

Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver.

I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face
the shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready
if he should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing.
I determined to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might
prove useful there. Texas in those days had the reputation of a
wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted
also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man
or woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me.
I was pretty cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of
my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In
Clayton there were some rook-rifles and so forth in a cycle shop,
but the only revolvers these people had impressed me as being too
small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop window in
the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, a
reasonably clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed "As used
in the American army."

I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two
pounds and more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last
a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me where I could get
ammunition, and I went home that night with bulging pockets, an
armed man.

The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of