“If I have been Chance’s victim all my life, that is no reason why I should help you to be no better. For you there is the great world, there is your art, there is life and joy when this pestilence shall have spent itself. I have nothing to offer you in exchange for all that. Nothing, Nan. My whole estate is just these poor clothes I stand in. If it were otherwise.... Oh, but why waste words and torturing thought on what might be. We have to face what is. Good-bye!” Abruptly he swung on his heel, and left her, so abruptly, indeed, that his departure took her by surprise, found her without a word in which to stay him. As in a dream she watched the tall, spare, soldierly figure swinging away through the trees towards the avenue. Then at last she half rose and a little fluttering cry escaped her. “Randal! Randal!” But already he was too far to hear her even if, had he heard, he would have heeded. CHAPTER XXVIII JESTING FORTUNE Jesting Fortune had not yet done with Colonel Holles. A month later, towards the middle of September, without having seen Nancy again--since that, of course, would have been denied him, as it would have nullified his sequestration from infected persons and surroundings--he found himself at liberty to return to the ordinary haunts of man, supplied with a certificate of health. He had been considering, in the few days preceding his discharge, whither he should direct his steps once he were made free of the world again, and he had returned to that earlier resolve of his to embark as a hand aboard some vessel bound for France. But a vessel must be found quickly, for Holles was utterly penniless. He possessed, as he had reminded Nancy, nothing but the comparatively cheap garments in which he stood. He might have obtained a few shillings from the pest-house authorities, but his gorge rose at the thought of seeking charity, particularly where it would better become him to bestow it, out of consideration for the benefits received. So within an hour of his discharge he found himself tramping along the empty streets of the City, bound for distant Wapping. He must go afoot, not only because he lacked the means to go otherwise, but because there were no longer any boats plying for hire at any of the steps along the river, nor any hackney-coaches remaining in the streets. More than ever was London become a city of the dead.