The next morning Earwaker went down to Tilbury, and said farewell t6 the travellers on board the steamship Orient.  Mrs. Thomas had already taken her brother-in-law under her special care.

‘It’s only three children to look after, instead of two,’ she remarked, in a laughing aside to the journalist.  ’How grateful he will be to you in a few days!  And I’m sure we are already.’

Malkin’s eyes were no longer quite lustreless.  At the last moment he talked with animation of ‘two years hence’, and there was vigour in the waving of his hand as the vessel started seaward.

CHAPTER III

Peak lost no time in leaving Exeter.  To lighten his baggage, and to get rid of possessions to which hateful memories attached, he sold all his books that had any bearing on theology.  The incomplete translation of Bibel und Natur he committed to the flames in Mrs Roots’s kitchen, scattering its black remnants with savage thrusts of the poker.  Whilst engaged in packing, he debated with himself whether or not he should take leave of the few acquaintances to whom he was indebted for hospitality and other kindness.  The question was:  Had Buckland Warricombe already warned these people against him?  Probably it had seemed to Buckland the wiser course to be content with driving the hypocrite away; and, if this were so, regard for the future dictated a retirement from Exeter which should in no way resemble secret flight.  Sidwell’s influence with her parents would perhaps withhold them from making his disgrace known, and in a few years he might be glad that he had behaved with all possible prudence.  In the end, he decided to write to Mr. Lilywhite, saying that he was obliged to go away at a moment’s notice, and that he feared it would be necessary altogether to change the scheme of life which he had had in view.  This was the best way.  From the Lilywhites, other people would hear of him, and perchance their conjectures would be charitable.

Without much hesitation he had settled his immediate plans.  To London he would not return, for he dreaded the temptations to which the proximity of Sidwell would expose him, and he had no mind to meet with Moxey or Earwaker.  As it was now imperative that he should find work of the old kind, he could not do better than go to Bristol, where, from the safe ground of a cheap and obscure lodging, he might make inquiries, watch advertisements, and so on.  He already knew of establishments in Bristol where he might possibly obtain employment.  Living with the utmost economy, he need not fall into difficulties for more than a year, and before then his good repute with the Rotherhithe firm would ensure him some position or other; if not in Bristol, then at Newcastle, St. Helen’s—­any great centre of fuming and malodorous industry.  He was ready to work, would delight in work. idleness was now the intolerable thing.