Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/139

 "If I go in again I'll have to kill your little Herbert," he told them. "And I'd hate to mess up your place for you."

He drew on Herbert's battered hat with a flourish, turned, and went down the drive.

As a matter of fact, Kay passed him in the car on her way to the club. But she was engrossed and anxious. She never saw the tall, weary and disheartened figure, limping slightly in its tight tan shoes.

When he reached the railroad station Tom simply took to the tracks and turned west. It would be incorrect to say that he walked and starved to Chicago, but it would be fairly close to the truth. Now and then a motor or a truck picked him up, and he shared the driver's food. Or he lay overnight in a barn and the farmer's wife gave him a breakfast. Ing Chicago he was able to sell the blue suit, however, and so secured money for his meals' on the train back. He could not sell the shoes; they were worn paper thin.

But in one way, the constant effort to move west and to subsist while doing so had been good for him. He had been cold and hungry; there had been times when the mere effort of putting one foot before the other had required all the will power he could summon. But there was little time in his general misery to think back. Such faculties as he had were directed only to getting back home again.

So it was that the Ursula paper one day announced his return.

"Tom McNair has returned from riding the big circle in the East. Tom looks a bit leg weary, but reports a good time was had by all."

At Omaha he had wired the Sheriff, but when one evening he descended from the day coach Allison was not in sight. The platform was dark and deserted save for the station agent, peering at him.

"That you, Tom? Well, say, I thought you'd lit out for good!"

God, it was good to be back; to feel the brisk night air, to see the loom of the mountains again, to find silence once more and familiar voices and faces. He stared at the lights