While she was still at the bakery she saw Adam three times. Each time he gave her a guinea. She took the guineas but felt no gratitude. The cat lay between them.

Adam could ill afford the guineas. He gave them out of pride, to show that he did not come home as a Prodigal Son. For all that, both his parents considered him such. If he had kept to the path laid down and swept for him, he would have been in the Ministry by now, with a manse, and printed books of sermons to his credit. Since they would only sigh at him, he went to brag of his travels to Mr Guthrie. One time it was Montpellier, in France; the next, Ratisbon; the next again, far Finland to see the aurora borealis. Mr Guthrie enjoyed the traveller’s tales; they were as good as a coal fire in the grate. After Adam had gone, he knelt down and prayed that Adam might not be led into becoming a Papist.

Travelling costs money. Adam hired himself out as a travelling tutor to sons of good families and showed the testimonials he had got from the Dollar University, all praising his learning and steady character. For a time, Adam and the boy would travel very sociably; then Adam would grow tired of this, and load the boy with lessons, keep him in, and allow him to eat nothing till he could ask for it in Latin, wake him before sunrise to study mathematics; and then, when he judged the moment ripe, send him out to buy a hat. The boy would see his chance and run away. Then Adam wrote a sorrowing letter to the parents and went off on his own devices.

Mostly he walked. He was as strong as a flea, and had an engaging manner with strangers. In his knapsack he carried a magnifying glass, his testimonials, and the skull of a marmoset. If he had been asked what he was in search of, he would have been hard put to it to say. He used his intellect as he used his legs: to carry him somewhere else. He studied astrology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, numerology, fortification, divination, organ building, metallurgy, medicine, perspective, the kabbala, toxicology, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He kept his interest in anatomy and did a dissection whenever he could get hold of a body. He learned Arabic, Catalan, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Romany, and demotic Greek. He had no religious feeling, didn’t drink, was an early riser, and cared only for very large women. Every time he crossed over a bridge the rumbling echo seemed to admonish him. But it was an inarticulate admonition, and as what he valued was exact knowledge, he disregarded it.