rancisco; it stood
guard, no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where he should cash his
credit; and though there were doubtless many other places, who should
say in which of them it was not ambushed? No, he could not tell where he
was to go; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let him go
back to the beginning. It was plain he must stay no longer where he was.
It was plain, too, that he must not flee as he was, for he could not
carry his portmanteau, and to flee and leave it was to plunge deeper in
the mire. He must go, leave the house unguarded, find a cab, and
return--return after an absence? Had he courage for that?

And just then he spied a stain about a hand's breadth on his
trousers-leg, and reached his finger down to touch it. The finger was
stained red: it was blood; he stared upon it with disgust, and awe, and
terror, and in the sharpness of the new sensation fell instantly to act.

He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the house, drew near
with hushed footsteps to the dining-room door, and shut and locked it.
Then he breathed a little freer, for here at least was an oaken barrier
between himself and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, tore
off the spotted trousers, which seemed in his eyes a link to bind him to
the gallows, flung them in a corner, donned another pair, breathlessly
crammed his night-things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it with
an effort from the ground, and with a rush of relief came forth again
under the open heavens.

The portmanteau, being of Occidental build, was no feather-weight; it
had distressed the powerful Alan; and as for John, he was crushed under
its bulk, and the sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set it
down to rest before he reached the gate; and when he had come so far, he
must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon one corner. Here, then, he
sat a while and panted; but now his thoughts were sensibly lightened;
now, with the trunk standing just inside the door, some part of his
dissociation from the house of crime had been effected, and the cabman
need not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful how that relieved him;
for the house, in his eyes, was a place to strike the most cursory
beholder with suspicion, as though the very windows had cried murder.

But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. As he thus sat,
taking breath in the shadow of the wall, and hopped about by sparrows,
it chanced that his eye roved t