An hour later Mr. Putchett, having to bid no family good-by, to care for no securities save those stowed away in his capacious pockets, and freed from the annoyance of baggage by reason of the fact that he had on his back the only outer garments that he owned, was rapidly leaving New York on a train, which he had carefully assured himself did not carry the dreaded Bayle.

Once fairly started, Mr. Putchett in some measure recovered his spirits.  He introduced himself to a brakeman by means of a cigar, and questioned him until he satisfied himself that the place to which he had purchased a ticket was indeed unknown to the world, being far from the city, several miles from the railroad, and on a beach where boats could not safely land.  He also learned that it was not a fashionable Summer resort, and that a few farmhouses (whose occupants took Summer boarders) and an unsuccessful hotel were the only buildings in the place.

Arrived at his destination, Mr. Putchett registered at the hotel and paid the week’s board which the landlord, after a critical survey of his new patron, demanded in advance.

Then the exiled operator tilted a chair in the barroom, lit an execrable cigar, and, instead of expressing sentiments of gratitude appropriate to the occasion, gave way to profane condemnations of the bad fortune which had compelled him to abandon his business.

He hungrily examined the faces of the few fishermen of the neighboring bay who came in to drink and smoke, but no one of them seemed likely to need money—­certainly no one of them seemed to have acceptable collaterals about his person or clothing.  On the contrary, these men, while each one threw Mr. Putchett a stare of greater or less magnitude, let the financier alone so completely that he was conscious of a severe wound in his self-esteem.

It was a strange experience, and at first it angered him so that he strode up to the bar, ordered a glass of best brandy, and defiantly drank alone; but neither the strength of the liquor nor the intensity of his anger prevented him from soon feeling decidedly lonely.

At the cheap hotel at which he lodged when in New York there was no one who loved him or even feared him, but there were a few men of his own kind who had, for purposes of mutual recreation, tabooed business transactions with each other, and among these he found a grim sort of enjoyment—­of companionship, at least.  Here, however, he was so utterly alone as to be almost frightened, and the murmuring and moaning of the surf on the beach near the hotel added to his loneliness a sense of terror.

Almost overcome by dismal forebodings, Mr. Putchett hurried out of the hotel and toward the beach.  Once upon the sands, he felt better; the few people who were there were strangers, of course, but they were women and children; and if the expression of those who noticed him was wondering, it was inoffensive—­at times even pitying, and Mr. Putchett was in a humor to gratefully accept even pity.