There is a certain stage of fright in which a man becomes terrible.  He who fears everything fears nothing.  He would strike the Sphynx.  He defies the Unknown.

Gwynplaine renewed the noise in every possible form—­stopping, resuming, unwearying in the shouts and appeals by which he assailed the tragic silence.  He called a thousand times on the names of those who should have been there.  He shrieked out every name except that of Dea—­a precaution of which he could not have explained the reason himself, but which instinct inspired even in his distraction.

Having exhausted calls and cries, nothing was left but to break in.

“I must enter the house,” he said to himself; “but how?”

He broke a pane of glass in Govicum’s room by thrusting his hand through it, tearing the flesh; he drew the bolt of the sash and opened the window.  Perceiving that his sword was in the way, he tore it off angrily, scabbard, blade, and belt, and flung it on the pavement.  Then he raised himself by the inequalities in the wall, and though the window was narrow, he was able to pass through it.  He entered the inn.  Govicum’s bed, dimly visible in its nook, was there; but Govicum was not in it.  If Govicum was not in his bed, it was evident that Nicless could not be in his.

The whole house was dark.  He felt in that shadowy interior the mysterious immobility of emptiness, and that vague fear which signifies—­“There is no one here.”

Gwynplaine, convulsed with anxiety, crossed the lower room, knocking against the tables, upsetting the earthenware, throwing down the benches, sweeping against the jugs, and, striding over the furniture, reached the door leading into the court, and broke it open with one blow from his knee, which sprung the lock.  The door turned on its hinges.  He looked into the court.  The Green Box was no longer there.

CHAPTER II.

THE DREGS.

Gwynplaine left the house, and began to explore Tarrinzeau Field in every direction.  He went to every place where, the day before, the tents and caravans had stood.  He knocked at the stalls, though he knew well that they were uninhabited.  He struck everything that looked like a door or a window.  Not a voice arose from the darkness.  Something like death had been there.

The ant-hill had been razed.  Some measures of police had apparently been carried out.  There had been what, in our days, would be called a razzia.  Tarrinzeau Field was worse than a desert; it had been scoured, and every corner of it scratched up, as it were, by pitiless claws.  The pocket of the unfortunate fair-green had been turned inside out, and completely emptied.

Gwynplaine, after having searched every yard of ground, left the green, struck into the crooked streets abutting on the site called East Point, and directed his steps towards the Thames.  He had threaded his way through a network of lanes, bounded only by walls and hedges, when he felt the fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of the river, and suddenly saw a parapet in front of him.  It was the parapet of the Effroc stone.