Some day
perhaps the real Tom would come back, and there would be wild
wonderment among those simple farm folks as to the identity of the
shadowy guest they had harboured under their roof. For his own
fate he felt no immediate anxiety; three pounds goes but little
way in the world when there is nothing behind it, but to a man who
has counted his exchequer in pennies it seems a good starting-
point. Fortune had done him a whimsically kind turn when last he
trod these lanes as a hopeless adventurer, and there might yet be
a chance of his finding some work and making a fresh start; as he
got further from the farm his spirits rose higher. There was a
sense of relief in regaining once more his lost identity and
ceasing to be the uneasy ghost of another. He scarcely bothered
to speculate about the implacable enemy who had dropped from
nowhere into his life; since that life was now behind him one
unreal item the more made little difference. For the first time
for many months he began to hum a careless lighthearted refrain.
Then there stepped out from the shadow of an overhanging oak tree
a man with a gun. There was no need to wonder who he might be;
the moonlight falling on his white set face revealed a glare of
human hate such as Stoner in the ups and downs of his wanderings
had never seen before.
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