A long saturating peace, a deep and drenching darkness, had folded Harry Sanderson. Dully at first, at length more insistently and sharply, a rhythmic pulsing sound began to annoy the quietude. K-track, k-track, k-track—it grew louder; it grew more momentous and material; it irritated the calm that had wrapped the animate universe. Shreds of confusing impression had begun to arrange themselves on a void of nothingness, blurred inchoate images to struggle through a delicious sensation of indifference and repose. Outlines were filling, contours growing distinct; the brain was beginning to resume its interrupted function. As though from an immeasurable distance he heard a low continuous roar, and now and again, through the roar, nearer voices.

Harry awoke. His mind awoke, but his eyes did not open at once, for the gentle swaying that cradled him was pleasant and the muffled clack and hum soothed him like opium. He was as serenely comfortable as a stevedore who dozes out of the long stupefaction of exhaustion to the realization that the day is a holiday. His blood was coursing like quicksilver. He felt a buoyancy, a volatile pleasure, a sense of complete emancipation from all that clogged and cloyed—the sensuous delight of the full pulse and the perfect bodily mechanism.

He opened his eyes.

It was daylight. He was lying on dusty boards that rattled and vibrated beneath him—the floor of an empty freight car in motion. The sliding door was part-way open, and through it was borne the moist air of a river bay and the purring wash of the tide. A small brown dog, an abject, muddied and shivering morsel, was snuggled close to his side. It whined, as if with joy to see his eyes opened, and its stubby tail beat the floor.

Harry turned his head. Two men in dingy garments were seated on the floor a little distance away, thumbing a decrepit pack of cards over an empty box. He could see both side-faces, one weather-beaten and good-humored, the other crafty—knights of the road.

The sudden movement had sent a momentary twinge to his temple; he put up his hand—it touched a coarse handkerchief that had been bound tightly about it. The corner hung down—it was soiled and stiff with blood. What was he doing there? Where was he? Who was he?

It came to him with a start that he actually for the moment did not know who he was—that he had ridiculously slipped the leash of his identity. He smiled at his predicament. He would lie quietly for a few moments and it would come: of course it would come!

Yet it did not come, though he lay many moments, the fingers of his mind fumbling for the latch of the closed door. He had waked perfectly well—all save the slight cut on his temple, and that was clearly superficial, a mere scratch. Not a trouble or anxiety marred his soul; his mind was as clear and light as a lark's. Body and brain together felt as if they had never had a serious ache in the world. But all that had preceded his awakening was gone from him as completely as though it had had no existence. His mind, so far as memory of incident was concerned, was wiped clean, as a wet sponge wipes off a slate. Yet he felt no trouble or anxiety. That part of his brain which had vibrated to these emotions was, as it were, under a curious anesthesia. Goaded and overkeyed into a state of hypertension, it had retaliated with insensibility. All that had vexed and hurt was gone into the limbo with its own disturbing memories.

Stealthily he rose to a sitting posture and, with a frown of humorous perplexity, took a swift and silent inventory. Here he was, in a freight car, speeding somewhere or other, with a sore and damaged skull. The dog clearly belonged to him, or he to the dog—there was an old intimacy in the fawning fondness of the amber eyes. Yonder were two tramps, diverting themselves in their own way, irresponsible and questionable birds of passage. He scanned his own clothing. It was little better than theirs. His coat was threadbare, and with mud, oil and coal-dust, was in a more disreputable state. His wristbands were grimy, and one cuff-link had been torn away. He had no hat.

He bethought himself of his pockets, and went through them methodically one by one. They yielded several dollars in coin, a penknife and a tiny gold cross, but not a letter, not a scrap of paper, nothing to serve him. The gleam of a ring on his finger caught his eye; he rubbed away the dirt and carefully examined it, wondering if the stone was real. His hand was slightly cut and swollen, and the circlet would not come off, but by shifting it slightly he could see the white depression made by long wear. The setting was an odd one, formed of the twisted letters H. S. Those naturally should be his initials, but there he stopped. He repeated to himself all the names he could think of beginning with S, but they told him nothing.

He looked himself over again, carefully, reflectively—many a time of old he had regarded himself with the same amused, fastidious tolerance when dressed for a "slumming" expedition—his head a little to one side, the ghost of a smile on his lips. He put out his hand and laid it on the spaniel's head.

Its rough tongue licked his fingers; it held up one forepaw mutely and lamely. He drew the feverish, dirty little creature into his lap and examined the limp member. It was broken.

"Poor little beggar!" said he under his breath. "So you've been knocked out, too!" With his knife he cut a piece from the lining of his coat and with a splinter of wood from the floor he set the fractured bone and wrapped the leg tightly. The dog submitted without a whimper, and when he set it down, it lay quietly beside him, watching him with affectionate canine solicitude.

"I wonder who we are, you and I," muttered Harry Sanderson whimsically. "I wonder!"

His gaze turned to where he could see the sunshine dancing and shimmering from the tremulous water. He sniffed the warm air—it was clear and sweet. Not a cloud was in the perfect sky. How fine he felt, broken head and all!

He looked across the car, where the card players were still absorbed. Over the shoulder of one he could see the hand he held—a queen, two aces, a seven and a deuce. For an instant something in his brain snapped and crackled like the sputtering spark of an incomplete insulation—for an instant the fingers almost touched the latch of the closed door. Then the sensation faded, and left a blank as before. He rose to his feet and walked forward.

The players looked around. One of them nodded approvingly.

"Right as a trivet!" he said. "I made a pretty good job of that cut of yours. Hurt you much?"

"No," said Harry. "I'm obliged to you for the attention."

"Foolish to walk on a railroad track," the other went on. "By your looks, you've been on the road long enough to know better. We figgered it out that you was just a-going to cross the railroad bridge when the freight raised merry hell with you. We stopped to tank there and we picked you up, you and your four-legged mate. Must have been a bit squiffy, eh?"

He winked, and took a flask from his pocket. "Have a hair of the dog that bit you?" he said.

Harry took the flask, and, wiping the top on his sleeve, uncorked it. Something in the penetrating odor of the contents seemed to cleave through far mental wastes to an intimate, though mysterious goal. He put it to his lips and drank thirstily.

As the burning liquid scorched his throat, a recrudescence of old impulses surged up through the crust of more modern usage. Mentally, characteristically, he was once more the incongruous devil-may-care figure in whom conspicuous achievement and contradictory excesses had walked hand in hand. The Harry Sanderson of the new, remorseful, temperate life, of chastened impulses, of rote and rule and reformed habit—the rector of St. James—had been lost on that wild night ride. The man who had awakened in the freight car was the Satan Sanderson of four years before, who, under stress of mental illness and its warped purview, in that strenuous scene in the chapel, had regained his ancient governance.

Harry handed back the flask with a long breath. There was a composed yet reckless light in his eye—the old veiled gleam of vagary, and paradox, and escapade. He seated himself beside them.

"Thank you," he said. "With your permission, gentlemen, I will take a hand in the game."