and it was no more use for him to try to live as[Pg 41] Murray Van Rensselaer any longer. He would just have to be born all over again into some one else. Born again! How did one do it? Well, he would have to be somebody else; make himself over; get new clothes first, of course, so he would look like a new man, and the clothes that he could find for what money he had would largely determine the kind of man he was to be made into. This cap was the start. It was a plain cheap working man’s cap. It was not the kind of cap that played much golf or polo, or was entitled to enter the best clubs, or drove an expensive car. It was a working man’s cap, and a working man he must evidently be in the new life. It was a part of being born that you didn’t choose where you should see the light of day, or who should be your parents. A strange pang shot through him at the thought of the parents whom he might not own any more. The name he had borne he would no longer dare to mention. It was the name of a murderer now. He had dishonored it. He would have to have a new name before it would be safe for him to go among men.

[Pg 41]

A policeman boarded the car in a few minutes and eyed him sharply as he passed to the other end of the car. Murray found his whole body in a tremble. He slid to the back platform and dropped off the next time the car slowed down, and walked a painful distance till a kindly voice from a dilapidated old Ford offered him a ride. Because he felt ready to drop and saw no shelter at hand where he might sleep a while, he accepted. It was too dark for[Pg 42] the man to see his face clearly anyway. He seemed to be an old man and not particularly canny. A worldly-wise man would scarcely have asked a stranger to ride at that time of night. So he climbed in beside him and sank into the seat too weary almost to sigh.

[Pg 42]

But the old farmer was of a social nature, and began to quiz him. How did he come to be walking? Was he going far?

The young man easily settled that.

“Car broke down!” That was true enough. His car would never run again.

But the old man wanted to know where.

Not being acquainted with the roads thereabout, Van Rensselaer could not lie intelligently, and he answered vaguely that he had been taking a cross-cut through a terrible road that did not seem to be much travelled.

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