A taxicab whirled him to his rooms, waited while his whirled together a few necessaries, whirled him back again. At 1.18 A.M. he was hammering, still highly strung, at the door of the solitary inn in Datchet. Reason and reaction only came with the morning. His prescience and his calculations seemed all ridiculously out of gear. He quite blushed over his coffee and kidney, thinking of the shame of the castigation he had earned for his shoulders. No doubt the two shillings had represented only part of the price of the ticket, the remainder being supplied from Miss Fleming’s own pocket. Or perhaps she had taken but not used the whole of that sum, retaining a few pence for tips. Either way hopelessly threw out his reckoning. He felt so discomfited all of a sudden, that he was almost on the point of taking the next train back to London. However, he forbore, deciding for his restoration on a balmy day in the country; and, evading, even in thought, all tentative enquiries as to recent arrivals in the village, he set out after breakfast for a walk. It was a sweet and glowing morning of late September, frank, fresh and life-stirring--the last to associate itself with thoughts of death and apparitions. The whole country seemed enjoying a restful convalescence from the low fever of August; the blatant tripper had fled; blazers of garish hue flowered no longer among the rushed; the sweeping cry of the swallows cut the wide air in place of chaff and banjo. Walking round by the Victoria Bridge, Gilead stopped to lean over the parapet and drink in the quiet beauty of the scene. To his right stretched the stately tree-haunted swards of the Home Park, the foliage just touched as with healthy sunburn. A royal lodge with a pleasant garden watched the bridge-end. Below, the water sparkled on in a never-ending pageant of ripples. To the left a long withy-bed, bushed with pale-leafed alders, reached away towards the village in a green perspective. Here was favourite mooring-ground for houseboats, since the royal demesne on one side and the osiers on the other kept the place private and unapproachable. In August one might see a dozen of them anchored off the willow-bank--vessels of varying degrees of importance, from the magnificent floating pleasure-house, to the cocky little bomb-ketch with a cuddy for cooking and sleeping-place. Now, however, all were gone but two--a huge hulk of a thing, patently deserted and dismantled, which lay away towards Datchet, and a much smaller affair, moored just clear of a patch of rushes but a long stone’s-throw from the bridge on which he stood.