"
"I'll make it two pounds," Tavernake promised. "I'm going to
sail for America to-morrow morning early, and I must see them
first."
The man leaned forward.
"Look here," he said, "if I knew where they was, a quid would be
quite good enough for me, but I don't, and that's straight. If
you want to look for them, I should try one of the doss houses.
As likely there as anywhere."
He slammed the door and Tavernake turned away. A sudden despair
had seized him. He looked up and down the street, he looked away
beyond and thought of the miles and miles of streets, the myriads
of chimneys, the huge branches of the great city stretching far
and wide. At eight o'clock the next morning, he must leave for
Southampton. Was it too late, after all, that he had discovered
the truth?
CHAPTER VII
IN A VIRGIN COUNTRY
One night Tavernake began to laugh. He had grown a long brown
beard and the hair was over his ears. He was wearing a gray
flannel shirt, a handkerchief tied around his neck, and a pair of
worn riding breeches held up by a belt. He had kicked his boots
off at the end of a long day, and was lying in the moonlight
before a fire of pine logs, whose smoke went straight to the
star-hung sky. No word had been spoken for the last hour.
Tavernake's fit of mirth came with as little apparent reason as
the puffs of wind which every now and then stole down from the
mountain side and made faint music in the virgin forests.
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