The young man produced a sheaf of circulars and began to explain. He found it difficult to place the applicant, his pale face, his hat jammed on his head to hide the prison crop, his equivocal hands. ‘Are you a mechanic?’ he asked. ‘No. Farmer.’ The clerk stared at him. ‘Farmer? You want to buy land?’ ‘No, I don’t. I want to work on it. I have a little money.’ ‘Married?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Taking the missus with you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And children?’ ‘No children.’ ‘You have to get two references for an assisted passage, you know,’ said the clerk, producing a form. ‘Never mind that. I can’t wait for any rubbish of that kind. What’s the fare, steerage?’ The clerk looked it up. ‘Liverpool, Quebec. That’s what you want,’ he said. ‘Then you get right over to Calgary if you take my advice. I’ll write it all down for you.’ He did so, in a sloped, flourishing hand, on the back of one of the circulars. ‘You’ll get the Allan boat from Liverpool Saturday week,’ he said. George thanked him and plunged out into the street. At the station he bought a daily paper, the North Bromwich _Courier_. As usual on Monday it was full of football. Albion at the top of the first league: Notts Forest, second. Strange clubs from the Southern League had invaded that sanctuary: the season was half over, and they were shaping well. He read words that meant nothing to him. He could not concentrate, for he had drunk as much as was good for him. The platform seemed to him a noisy, exposed situation; for he could not yet be at his ease in a crowd. He started at the sound of a familiar voice speaking the word Lesswardine. A man passed him in a drab covert-coat: Mr Prosser of The Dyke, talking to young Maddy. They had not recognised him. He slipped into a urinal to avoid them and waited there till he heard the south-bound train roll in. Then he made a dash for a non-smoking carriage and hid himself behind his newspaper in the corner. The train was not full, and to his great relief no one entered his compartment. They started smoothly and soon left Shrewsbury behind. A wintry landscape unfolded on either side of him: the low bow of the Wrekin; Caer Caradoc, a sheer crag on the left; the cloven bastions of the Long Mynd. He threw up the window and drank in great draughts of hill air. He laughed to see the green of the fields and the gray, monstrous hills. But he knew that he was a stranger. The country that he rejoiced to see had rejected him. If he lived to be a hundred not a single man of his acquaintance would forget that he had spent a year in jail. As soon as he should have left Craven Arms the hills would fold him in, draw him within the confines of his old life. He was free, but this could never be a real freedom. A wider country, a new life, Canada. . . . He was dying for a drink.