The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-10-16
Chapter 24 ToLoNpoN

CAROLINE caught the seven A thirty to London. All the time she and Jim were getting into Hale Place, while he was pulling down the blankets and she was saying someone might see her if she came back by day, she was concocting a secret plan.
 In the end she ran away because she was afraid that he would guess what she meant to do. She thought he would have guessed if ne hadn't been stupid with fatigue. She thought he was like a man half drugged. That was why he hadn't guessed; and it was lucky for her. because if he had guessed, he would have tried to stop her, and she meant to go.
 It was past two o'clock when she came back to the cottage. The gate was unlatched and the door stood wide open as she had left it. If Patsy Ann had only known! To Patsy there was always a burglar round the next corner.
 Caroline undressed and lay down under her great-grandmother's em- broidered quilt, but she did not sleep. She was too flooded with joy to sleep. Her hands still kept the touch of Jim's hands; her ears still rang with all the sounds of his voice She had no time to fall asleep.
 At six she dressed. went tiptoe down the stairs, made tea, and boiled herself an egg. Then she wrote on the slate, Gone to town" and propped it up against the bowl of fruit in the middle of the gate-leg table; after which she set out to walk four miles across the fields to Hinton, where she caught the train.
 She had the compartment to her self as far as Ledlington, where 1t filled up. She wondered what she would do if Nesta Riddell were to get in. How dare she say Jim was her husband? It was the most unbe- lievable, impudent thing. Caroline tripped up over her own word. This wasn't unbelievable, because she had done it. The unbelievable thing was that she should claim a strang. CT. But she had claimed a stranger. Had she? If it was unbelievable, then Caroline didn't believe it. Then he wasn't a stranger. Where did this take her. She had a terrified sense of having betrayed herself and Jim,
 p She pushed the word that had tMpped her right out of her mind and shut the door on it. She hadn't got to account for what Nesta Rid. dell had done. She had only to go to the Grove Road registry office and see James Riddell's name in a strangers writing. That would prove that Nesta was lying. and that Jim was free. It was the easiest thing in the world, and she felt that she couldn't bear to see Jim again until she had the proof that it was not he who had signed the register as Nesta Riddell's husband.
 The train logged along. It stopped at every station, but after Ledling. ton the compartment was too full to take. in any more passengers.
 THERE was an old woman with a 4 string bag full of vegetables and an enormous sheaf of cottage flowers-crimso phlox, red and yell low single dahlias, full-blown cab bage roses, and clove carnations which scented the whole compart- ment.
 She had crushed black straw hat on the back of her head, black Cashmere dress, and thick black cloth coat. Her face was broad and red under scanty wlsps Of grey ha1r. She was very hot, because she lived two miles out of Ledlington and had hurried to catch the train.
 She famed herself with cabbage leaf. and as soon as she had got her breath she began to talk, first about the weather, and then about the Van Berg case. Three girls on the opposite seat, flimsily dressed slips of things with salmon-colored stockings, berets, and magenta lips went on whispering and giggling to- gether while she told them how the snails were over-running her garden from one end to the other, and how she had set slug trap-"And if I was to tell you what caught, you wouldn't believe me-" 6