I glanced back after him.

He won't touch it," said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was only

too willing to be reassured.

At first something of the gray of the morning was in my mind, but

presently the sun disengaged itself from the level clouds of the horizon

and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering waters. My

spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things I had done and

had yet to do came with the sunlight into my mind. I laughed aloud as the

foremost man staggered under my gold. When indeed I took my place in the

world, how amazed the world would be!

If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the

Littlestone hotel would have been amusing, as he hesitated between my gold

and my respectable company on the one and my filthy appearance on the

other. But at last I found myself in a terrestrial bathroom once more with

warm water to wash myself with, and a change of raiment, preposterously

small indeed, but anyhow clean, that the genial little man had lent me. He

lent me a razor too, but I could not screw up my resolution to attack even

the outposts of the bristling beard that covered my face.

I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid

appetite--an appetite many weeks old and very decrepit--and stirred myself

to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them the truth.

234

The First Men In The Moon