As he stood there a car approached from the east, and noticing Jamie’s uniform, his emaciated face and hands, the driver stopped, as all drivers stopped in those days, only Jamie, confined in hospitals, did not know it, and asked him if he would like to ride. The car was turning north, so Jamie said that he would very much like to ride. That is how it happened that the wheels of an automobile carried him so far from the region of the hospital that when he was really missed and nurses were sent out to seek him, one hundred miles away and still speeding northward, Jamie was making fine progress on his big adventure.
He liked the road that led to the north. He liked it so well that when finally the driver told him he was turning west at the next crossroad, where he had business in a big city, Jamie decided that a man in a uniform who might be sought by government officials had better remain in the country, and so he climbed from the car and slowly plodded north.
In an enforced rest, he began to realize that night was coming and that he was hungry. He had not a cent in his pockets, and to lie on the ground in the chill of a California night would probably kill him very speedily. Then he realized that quite likely death was the Great Adventure he was seeking; that in taking his fate in his own hands and walking out of the hospital and away from the provisions that were made for him by his government, he had known that he would exhaust himself speedily to such a point that his troubles would be ended in the quickest way. He spent a few minutes wondering whether his
