o make money; he had bought things at sales
and pawned them, but presently found it more profitable to pawn goods
bought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement at the hospital
when someone pointed out his name in police-court proceedings. There had
been a remand, then assurances on the part of a harassed father, and the
young man had gone out to bear the White Man's Burden overseas. The
imagination of another, a lad who had never before been in a town at all,
fell to the glamour of music-halls and bar parlours; he spent his time
among racing-men, tipsters, and trainers, and now was become a
book-maker's clerk. Philip had seen him once in a bar near Piccadilly
Circus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim. A
third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved success at
the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his imitation of notorious
comedians, had abandoned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy.
Still another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth manner and
interjectional speech did not suggest that he was capable of any deep
emotion, had felt himself stifle among the houses of London. He grew
haggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled
like a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick
palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open,
desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and he walked
off one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another;
and the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine
and was working on a farm.

Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery. On certain
mornings in the week he practised bandaging on out-patients glad to earn
a little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use the
stethoscope. He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination in
Materia Medica in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs,
concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments. He seized avidly
upon anything from which he could extract a suggestion of human interest.

He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have the pain of
cutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had felt a certain
self-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom were now friends
of his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel with Griffiths and
surmised they were aware of the reason. One of them,