These and his sheaf of shorthand notes pasted together, folded flat and inclosed in his small leather pack, were all that Felix Looms brought away with him from the prison. Once more he went afoot along the dusty road, followed the ridge along the river, crossed the bridge above the railroad tracks and descended to the station below to wait for a train bound for the city. Persons who were gathered on the platform looked at him--some understandingly; some curiously. He found it easier to evade their eyes than to return their stares. Presently a train came and he boarded it, finding a seat in the smoker. The exaltation that had possessed him when he went to Sing Sing was all gone. A certain indefinable numbness affected his body, his limbs, his mind, making his thoughts heavy and his movements sluggish. For months past he had felt this numbness; but he had felt sure that liberty and the coming of the time for the fulfillment of his great work would dissipate it. He was free now, and still the lassitude persisted. He viewed the prospect of beginning his novel with no particular enthusiasm. He said to himself that disuse of the pen had made him rusty; that the old enthusiasm, which is born of creation, of achievement, of craftsmanship exercised, would return to him as soon as he had put the first word of his book on paper; and that after that the story would pour forth with hardly a conscious effort on his part. It had been so in the past; to a much greater degree it should be so now. Yet, for the moment, he viewed the prospect of starting his novel almost with physical distaste. In this mental fog he rode until the train rolled into the Grand Central Station and stopped. Seeing his fellow passengers getting off he roused himself and followed them as they trailed in straggling lines through the train shed and out into the great new terminal. It was late afternoon of a summer's day. His plans immediately following his advent into the city had all been figured out long in advance. He meant to seek obscure lodgings until he could secure a few needed additions to his wardrobe. Then he would communicate with his publisher and make to him a private confession regarding his whereabouts during the past three years, and outline to him the book he had in mind to write. Under the circumstances it would be easy to secure a cash advance from any publisher. Thus fortified with ready money Looms would go away to some quiet place in the country and write the book. Mulling these details over in his head he shambled along automatically until suddenly he found himself standing in Forty-second Street. He slipped backward involuntarily, for the crowds that swirled by him daunted him. It seemed to him that they were ten times as thick, ten times as noisy, ten times as hurried as they had been when last he paused in that locality.