ackhall, and offered the watch,
which was worth ten pounds, in payment for a meal of bread and cheese?
The incongruity was too remarkable; the good folks would either put him
to the door, or only let him in to send for the police. He turned his
pockets out one after another; some San Francisco tram-car checks, one
cigar, no lights, the pass-key to his father's house, a
pocket-handkerchief, with just a touch of scent: no--money could be
raised on none of these. There was nothing for it but to starve; and
after all, what mattered it! That also was a door of exit.

He crept close among the bushes, the wind playing round him like a lash;
his clothes seemed thin as paper, his joints burned, his skin curdled on
his bones. He had a vision of a high-lying cattle-drive in California,
and the bed of a dried stream with one muddy pool, by which the vaqueros
had encamped: splendid sun over all, the big bonfire blazing, the strips
of cow browning and smoking on a skewer of wood; how warm it was, how
savoury the steam of scorching meat! And then again he remembered his
manifold calamities, and burrowed and wallowed in the sense of his
disgrace and shame. And next he was entering Frank's restaurant in
Montgomery Street, San Francisco; he had ordered a pan-stew and venison
chops, of which he was immoderately fond, and as he sat waiting, Munroe,
the good attendant, brought him a whisky-punch; he saw the strawberries
float on the delectable cup, he heard the ice chink about the straws.
And then he woke again to his detested fate, and found himself sitting,
humped together, in a windy combe of quarry-refuse--darkness thick about
him, thin flakes of snow lying here and there like rags of paper, and
the strong shuddering of his body clashing his teeth like a hiccough.

We have seen John in nothing but the stormiest conditions; we have seen
him reckless, desperate, tried beyond his moderate powers: of his daily
self, cheerful, regular, not unthrifty, we have seen nothing; and it may
thus be a surprise to the reader to learn that he was studiously careful
of his health. This favourite pre-occupation now awoke. If he were to
sit there and die of cold, there would be mighty little gained; better
the police cell and the chances of a jury trial, than the miserable
certainty of death at a dyke-side before the next winter's dawn, or
death a little later in the gas-lit wards of an infirmary.

He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there amon