His steps rang out cheerfully on the path ironbound with frost. He was almost happy again under the exhilarating glow of unusual exercise and the excitement of escape and regained freedom.
He ran on, past a series of villa residences enclosed in varnished palings and adorned with that mediæval abundance of turrets, balconies, and cheap stained-glass, which is accepted nowadays as a guarantee of the tenant's culture, and a satisfactory substitute for effective drainage. After the villas came a church, and a few yards farther on the road turned with a sharp curve into the main thoroughfare leading to the station.
He was so near it that he could hear the shrill engine whistles, and the banging of trucks on the railway sidings echoed sharply from the neighbouring houses. He was saved, in sight of haven at last!
Full of delight at the thought, he put on a still greater pace, and turning the corner without looking, ran into a little party of three, which was coming in the opposite direction.
Fate's vein of irony was by no means worked out yet. As he was recovering from the collision, and preparing to offer or accept an apology, as the case might be, he discovered to his horror that he had fallen amongst no strangers.
The three were his old acquaintances, Coker, Coggs, and the virtuous Chawner—of whom he had fondly hoped to have seen the last for ever!
The moral and physical shock of such an encounter took all Mr. Bultitude's remaining breath away. He stood panting under the sickly rays of a street-lamp, the very incarnation of helpless, hopeless dismay.
"Hallo!" said Coker, "it's young Bultitude!"
"What do you mean by cannoning into a fellow like this?" said Coggs. "What are you up to out here, eh?"
"If it comes to that," said Paul, casting about for some explanation of his appearance, "what are you up to here?"