“‘Why, that’s rum,’ said the elder.  ’Dashed rum!  It’s just like the ghost of a foot, ain’t it?’ He hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand.  A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl.  In another moment he would have touched me.  Then I saw what to do.  I made a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house.  But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow the movement, and before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall.

“They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the lower step and upon the pavement.  ‘What’s up?’ asked someone.  ‘Feet!  Look!  Feet running!’

“Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this blow not only impeded me but them.  There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation.  At the cost of bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks.  There was no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me.

“Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the damp impressions began to fade.  At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether.  The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe’s solitary discovery.

“This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs hereabouts.  My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the cabman’s fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I was lame from a little cut on one foot.  I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle intuitions.  Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears.  Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow.  I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional sneeze.  And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing, was a terror to me.

“Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting as they ran.  It was a fire.  They ran in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires.  It was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland Street, were there.  Burning!  I had burnt my boats—­if ever a man did!  The place was blazing.”