xchanged
his overalls for a tan flannel shirt, black bow tie, thick pigskin
shoes, and the suit he had worn the evening before, his best suit of two
years ago--baggy blue serge coat and trousers. He could not know it, but
they were surprisingly graceful on his wiry, firm, white body.

In his pockets were a roll of bills and an unexpectedly good gold watch.
For warmth he had a winter ulster, an old-fashioned turtle-neck sweater,
and a raincoat heavy as tarpaulin. He plunged into the raincoat, ran
out, galloped to Rauskukle's store, bought the most vehement cap in the
place--a plaid of cerise, orange, emerald green, ultramarine, and five
other guaranteed fashionable colors. He stocked up with food for
roadside camping.

In the humping tin-covered tail of the bug was a good deal of room, and
this he filled with motor extras, a shotgun and shells, a pair of
skates, and all his camping kit as used on his annual duck-hunting trip
to Man Trap Lake.

"I'm a darned fool to take everything I own but---- Might be gone a
whole month," he reflected.

He had only one possession left--a check book, concealed from the
interested eye of his too maternal landlady by sticking it under the
stair carpet. This he retrieved. It showed a balance of two hundred
dollars. There was ten dollars in the cash register in the office, for
Ben Sittka. The garage would, with the mortgage deducted, be worth
nearly two thousand. This was his fortune.

He bolted into the kitchen and all in one shout he informed his
landlady, "Called out of town, li'l trip, b'lieve I don't owe you
an'thing, here's six dollars, two weeks' notice, dunno just when I be
back."

Before she could issue a questionnaire he was out in the bug. He ran
through town. At his friend McGolwey; now loose-lipped and wabbly,
sitting in the rain on a pile of ties behind the railroad station, he
yelled, "So long, Mac. Take care yourself, old hoss. Off on li'l trip."

He stopped in front of the "prof's," tooted till the heads of the
Joneses appeared at the window, waved and shouted, "G'-by, folks. Goin'
outa town."

Then, while freedom and the distant Pacific seemed to rush at him over
the hood, he whirled out of town. It was two minutes to one--forty-seven
minutes since Claire Boltwood had entered Schoenstrom.

He stopped only once. His friend Lady Vere de Vere was at the edge of
town, on a scientific exploring trip in the matter of ethnology and
field mice. She hailed him, "Mrwr? M