This question had troubled Joe since their flight. He had an immense respect for Wayne; it was inconceivable that Mr. Wayne Craighill, a gentleman of property, a member of clubs, and a person otherwise indulged and favoured by Fortune, should not weary of this idle adventure and go home. He was confident that his companion would come to himself soon, but he would follow him to the world’s end. Just now, as evening stole over the town, Joe was hungry and Wayne’s indifference to the stomach’s pinch was inexplicable. He did not dare propose that they seek food. Wayne was chief of the expedition and it was not for a mere private in the ranks to make suggestions. “Did you ever try tramping?” Wayne asked presently. “I can’t say that I ever did, sir. You mean followin’ the railroad and dodgin’ the cops? Sleepin’ in barns and jails and takin’ a hand-out and a dog-bite at back doors. I ain’t choosy, but I ain’t for it, Mr. Wayne. I like the varnished cars myself.” Wayne did not debate the matter. He did not see his future clearly; the world was bitter in his mouth. He was fumbling the alphabet of life like a child with lettered blocks, soberly piling them in false positions with the X of unknown quantity in the middle. Once more he had suffered defeat at his father’s hands. The newspaper accounts of Andrew Gregory’s death, on which he had pounced the day after his flight, had been the briefest: he had dropped dead while calling at the home of his old friend, Roger Craighill! Cheated again in satisfying his hatred of his father, the knowledge that Roger Craighill had lied to the doctors was poor consolation. He had submitted himself, a willing Isaac, to be laid on Abraham’s altar, but the right to perish had been denied him. He was utterly morbid; there was no health in him. He was still, in Stoddard’s phrase, a man in search of his own soul, though he did not know it. He had stood between the pillars of life without power to shake them down. He sat, as it were, on the steps beneath the high arch, a defeated Samson. But he would never go back; that was definitely determined; and by continuing his exile he might perhaps intensify his father’s penitence, for Roger Craighill had, he assumed, some sort of conscience that would rest uneasy under the suppressed fact that he had laid violent hands on Andrew Gregory.