Gurney’s alternative to flying from the plague was to run away from himself. He shirked the issue in his conversations with Thrale, shuffled, sophisticated, and in a futile endeavour to convince his companion, convinced himself that his reasoning was sound and his motive unprejudiced.

It was not until the following Thursday, however, that he took train to Cornwall. He had succeeded in realizing between two and three hundred pounds in gold, and this he took with him. He intended to lay in stores of flour, sugar and other primary necessities; to buy and keep two or three cows, to rear chickens, to grow as much garden produce as possible, especially potatoes; and generally to provide against the coming scarcity of food and the cessation of transport.

The bungalow on the shores of Constantine Bay, to which he departed, was a place well suited to the carrying out of these prudent arrangements. It belonged to a friend of his, who was rich enough to indulge his whims, and who had spent a considerable sum of money in building the place and enclosing ground, but who rarely occupied the bungalow himself, and was too careless to bother about letting it. Gurney had the keys in his possession. When he had asked his friend for permission to spend his summer holiday there, he had been told to use the place as if it were his own. “Jolly good thing for me, you know,” his friend had said. “Keep it dry and all that.”

Gurney was not an idle man. Arrived at his bungalow, he lost no time in carrying out the arrangements he had schemed, and for nearly three weeks he was so absorbed in this work, in learning new occupations and perfecting his plan, that he did, indeed, achieve his purpose of running away from himself.

He became imbued with a new feeling of security; he received neither letters nor papers from the outside, and the old labourer who assisted him in setting potatoes, who taught him to milk a cow and instructed him generally in the primitive arts of self-supporting toil, seemed to regard all rumours of the new plague which filtered through to the village of St Merryn as some foreign nonsense which had little bearing on life in the county of Cornwall, as represented by the twenty-five or thirty square miles which were to him all the essential world.

Gurney began to believe that the plague would never cross the Tamar, and one day in early May, when his provisions against a siege were practically completed, he was stirred to attempt a journey across the peninsula in order to visit an acquaintance in East Looe. Gurney had become conscious of a longing for some companionship. Old Hawken was very good at cows and potatoes, but he was rather deaf and his range of ideas was severely restricted.

From Padstow to Looe is not an ideal journey by rail at the best of times, involving as it does, a change of train at Wadebridge, Bodmin Road and Liskeard; but Gurney was in no hurry, and the conversations he overheard in his compartment were not destructive of his new-found complacency. There was, indeed, some mention of the plague, but only in relation to the scarcity of food supply and its effect on trade. One passenger, very obviously a farmer, was congratulating himself that he was getting higher prices for stock than he had ever known, and that as luck would have it he had sown an unusual number of acres with wheat that year. “I’ll be gettun sixty or seventy a quarter, sure ’nough,” he boasted.

Dickenson—Gurney’s friend in Looe—regarded the matter more seriously, but he, too, seemed untouched by any fear of personal infection. He was an ardent Liberal, and his chief cause for concern seemed to be that the plague should have come at a time when so much progress was being made with legislation. He was, also, very distressed at the reports of poverty and starvation which abounded, and at the terrible blow to trade generally. But he seemed hopeful that the trouble would pass and be followed by a new era of enlightened government, founded on sound Liberal principles.

Gurney stayed the night and the greater part of the next day at Looe.

On his return journey he had to wait at Liskeard to pick up the main line train for London, which would take him to Bodmin Road.

It was a glorious May evening. The day had been hot, but now there was a cool breeze from the sea, and the long shadow from the high bank of the cutting enwrapped the whole station in a pleasant twilight.

Gurney, deliberately pacing the length of the platform, was conscious of physical vigour and a great enjoyment of life. He had an imaginative temperament, and in his moments of exaltation he found the world both interesting and beautiful, an entirely desirable setting for the essential Gurney.

So he strolled up and down the platform, regarded any female figure with interest, and was in no way concerned that the train was already an hour late. He had expected it to be late. His own train from Looe, for no particular reason, had been half an hour late. If he missed his connexion at Wadebridge he would only have some seven or eight miles to walk.

Fifteen or twenty other people were waiting on the down platform, and presently Gurney became conscious that his fellow-passengers were no longer detached into parties of two and three, but were collected in groups, discussing, apparently, some matter of peculiar interest.

Gurney had been lost in his dreams and had hardly noticed the passage of time. He looked at his watch and found that the train was now two hours overdue. The sun had set, but there was still light in the sky. A man detached himself from one of the groups and Gurney approached him.

“Two hours late,” he remarked by way of introducing himself, and looked at his watch again.

The man nodded emphatically. “Funny thing is,” he said, “that they’ve had no information at the office. The stationmaster generally gets advice when the train leaves Plymouth.”

“Good lord,” said Gurney. “Do you mean to say that the train hasn’t got to Plymouth yet?”

“Looks like it,” said the stranger. “They say it’s the plague. It’s dreadfully bad in London, they tell me.”

“D’you mean it’s possible the train won’t come in at all?” asked Gurney.

“Oh! I should hardly think that,” replied the other. “Oh, no, I should hardly think that, but goodness knows when it will come. Very awkward for me. I want to get to St Ives. It’s a long way from here. Have you far to go?”

“Well, Padstow,” said Gurney.

“Padstow!” echoed the stranger. “That’s a good step.”

“Further than I want to walk.”

“I should say. Thirty miles or so, anyway?”

“About that,” agreed Gurney. “I wonder where one could get any information.

“It’s very awkward,” was all the help the stranger had to offer.

Gurney crossed the line and invaded the stationmaster’s office. “Sorry to trouble you,” he said, “but do you think this train’s been taken off, for any reason?”

“Oh, it ’asn’t been taken off,” said the stationmaster with a wounded air. “It may be a bit late.”

Gurney smiled. “It’s something over two hours behind now, isn’t it?” he said.

“Well, I can’t ’elp it, can I?” asked the stationmaster. “You’ll ’ave to ’ave patience.”

“You’ve had no advice yet from Plymouth?” persisted Gurney, facing the other’s ill-temper.

“No, I ’aven’t; something’s gone wrong with the wire. We can’t get no answer,” returned the stationmaster. “Now, if you please, I ’ave my work to do.”

Gurney returned to the down platform and joined a group of men, among whom he recognized the man he had spoken to a few minutes before.

The afterglow was dying out of the sky, in the south-west a faint young moon was setting behind the high bank of the cutting. A porter had lighted the station lamps, but they were not turned full on.

“The stationmaster tells me that something has gone wrong with the telegraphic communication,” said Gurney, addressing the little knot of passengers collectively. “He can’t get any answer it seems.”

“Been an accident likely,” suggested some one.

“Or the engine-driver’s got the plague,” said another.

“They’d have put another man on.”

“If they could find one.”

“If we ain’t careful we shall be gettin’ the plague down ’ere.”

After all why not? The horrible suggestion sprang up in Gurney’s mind with new force. That remote city seemed suddenly near. He saw in imagination the train leaving Paddington, and only a journey of six or seven hours divided that departure from its arrival at Liskeard. It might come in at any moment, bearing the awful infection. Why should he wait? There was an inn near the station. He might find a conveyance there.

“Constantine Bay?” questioned the landlord.

“It’s near St Merryn,” said Gurney, but still the landlord shook his head.

“Not far from Padstow,” explained Gurney.

“Pard-stow!” exclaimed the landlord on a rising note. “Drive over to Pard-stow at this time o’ night?” He appeared to think that Gurney was joking.

“Well, Bodmin, then,” suggested Gurney.

“Aw, why not take the train?” asked the landlord.

Gurney shrugged his shoulders. “The train doesn’t seem to be coming,” he said.

“Bad job, that,” answered the landlord. “Been an accident, sure ’nough; this new plague or something.” He was evidently prepared to accept the matter philosophically.

“You can’t drive me then?” asked Gurney.

The landlord shook his head with a grin. He was inclined to look upon this foreigner as rather more foolish than the majority of his kind.

Gurney came out of the little inn, and looked down into the station. The number of waiting passengers seemed to be decreasing, but the light was so dim that he could not see into the shadows.

“I must keep hold of myself,” he was saying. “I mustn’t run.”

A man was coming up the steep incline towards him, and Gurney moved slowly to meet him. He found that it was the stranger he had spoken to on the platform.

“Any news?” asked Gurney.

“Yes, they’ve got a message through from Saltash,” replied the stranger. “It’s the plague right enough. They say they don’t know when there’ll be another train....”

Days grew into weeks, and still there were no trains. Trade was at a standstill, and the prices of home produce mounted steadily. Fish there was, but not in great abundance, and the towns inland, such as Truro and Bodmin, organized a motor service with coast fishing villages, a service which only lasted for a week, by reason of the failure of the petrol supply. After that there was a less effective horse service.

Within three weeks after that last train arrived from outside, a new system of exchange was coming into vogue. In this little congeries of communities in Cornwall, men were beginning to learn the uselessness of gold, silver and bronze coins as tokens. Credit had collapsed, and a system of barter was being introduced, mainly between farmer and fisherman. In time it was possible that Cornwall might have become a self-supporting community, for its proportionately few inhabitants were rapidly being depleted by want and starvation; but, although it was the last place in the British Isles to become infected, the plague came there, too, in the end.

A steamer sent out from Cardiff on a plundering expedition carried the plague to the Scillies, and a fishing vessel from St Ives carried it on to Newlyn....