He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain.  His friend was very considerate and forbearing, and they travelled slowly and talked little.  At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things.  He seldom looked at a newspaper, he never opened a letter without a moment’s contraction of the heart.  It was not that he had any special cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on everything.  He had looked too deep down into the abyss. ...  But little by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common promptings of curiosity.  He was beginning to wonder how the world was going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no letters for him in the steamer’s mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of disappointment.  His friend had gone into the jungle on a long excursion, and he was lonely, unoccupied, and wholesomely bored.  He got up and strolled into the stuffy reading-room.

There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some copies of Zion’s Herald, and a pile of New York and London newspapers.

He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that they were less recent than he had hoped.  Evidently the last numbers had been carried off by luckier travellers.  He continued to turn them over, picking out the American ones first.  These, as it happened, were the oldest:  they dated back to December and January.  To Faxon, however, they had all the flavor of novelty, since they covered the precise period during which he had virtually ceased to exist.  It had never before occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.

To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically, and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a lock.  It was the seventeenth of December:  the date of the day after his arrival at Northridge.  He glanced at the first page and read in blazing characters:  “Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company.  Lavington’s Name Involved.  Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its Foundations.”

He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the next.  There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement “Investigation” still held the centre of the stage.  From its complex revelations of greed and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read:  “Rainer.  Suddenly, at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John, only son of the late. ...”

His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time with his face in his hands.  When he looked up again he noticed that his gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them on the floor at his feet.  The uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes began their search again.  “John Lavington comes forward with plan for reconstructing Company.  Offers to put in ten millions of his own—­The proposal under consideration by the District Attorney.”