Arthur rushed direct to the railway without losing a moment. He did not make a pilgrimage to the Bates’ house, as Durant had done; he brushed past the old haircloth sofa standing out exposed to rain and damp at the broker’s door, and was not conscious of its existence. There was a train about to start, that was all he knew. When he got back to London he drove, without losing a moment, to the other railway, and went off at the earliest possible moment to Oakenden. He arrived there late in the afternoon, with nothing, not so much as a bag, remembering nothing beyond the fact that Nancy had been there. But what could he do when he got there? He did not know how to find such a needle in that bottle of hay. The town was not large, but it was bustling and busy. It had new streets even since Arthur left home; and through what weary labour must he go before he could find the two, who might have veiled themselves in any one of five hundred new little brick houses? He took a rapid walk through the new streets in the dusk of the evening, gazing at all the parlour windows. It was not likely that fortune would answer his appeal by bringing Nancy to look out just at the moment he passed. Such a thing might happen to Denham, who had nothing to do with it, but not to him, to whom it was everything. If he had been seeking a criminal there might have been hope for him, or had he been in one of the blessed countries where everybody has _ses papiers_. Why has not everybody _ses papiers_ in England? Arthur was ready, in the heat of his feelings, to give up his birthright if that might have helped him to find his wife.