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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mugby Junction, by Charles Dickens, et al,
+Illustrated by Jules A. Goodman
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Mugby Junction
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2009  [eBook #27924]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUGBY JUNCTION***
+
+
+This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
+
+                            CHRISTMAS STORIES
+                             FROM "HOUSEHOLD
+                             WORDS" AND "ALL
+                             THE YEAR ROUND"
+                                EDITED BY
+                             CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+
+                              Mugby Junction
+
+
+                         [Picture: Frontispiece]
+
+                          [Picture: Title page]
+
+                      RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
+                             LONDON & BUNGAY.
+
+                            MUGBY JUNCTION: BY
+                         CHARLES DICKENS, ANDREW
+                        HALLIDAY, CHARLES COLLINS,
+                        HESBA STRETTON, AND AMELIA
+                       B. EDWARDS: BEING THE EXTRA
+                         CHRISTMAS NUMBER OF "ALL
+                       THE YEAR ROUND," 1866.  WITH
+                        A FRONTISPIECE BY A. JULES
+                        GOODMAN.  LONDON: CHAPMAN
+                          AND HALL, LTD.  1898.
+
+                               INDEX TO
+                            MUGBY JUNCTION
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+BARBOX BROTHERS.                     BY CHARLES DICKENS              1
+BARBOX BROTHERS & CO.                BY CHARLES DICKENS             43
+MAIN LINE: THE BOY AT MUGBY.         BY CHARLES DICKENS             72
+No. 1 BRANCH LINE: THE SIGNALMAN.    BY CHARLES DICKENS             89
+No. 2 BRANCH LINE: THE ENGINE        BY ANDREW HALLIDAY            111
+      DRIVER.
+No. 3 BRANCH LINE: THE               BY CHARLES COLLINS            125
+      COMPENSATION HOUSE.
+No. 4 BRANCH LINE: THE TRAVELLING    BY HESBA STRETTON             154
+      POST-OFFICE.
+No. 5 BRANCH LINE: THE ENGINEER.     BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS          187
+
+
+
+BARBOX BROTHERS
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Guard!  What place is this?"
+
+"Mugby Junction, sir."
+
+"A windy place!"
+
+"Yes, it mostly is, sir."
+
+"And looks comfortless indeed!"
+
+"Yes, it generally does, sir."
+
+"Is it a rainy night still?"
+
+"Pours, sir."
+
+"Open the door.  I'll get out."
+
+"You'll have, sir," said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and
+looking at the tearful face of his watch by the light of his lantern as
+the traveller descended, "three minutes here."
+
+"More, I think.--For I am not going on."
+
+"Thought you had a through ticket, sir?"
+
+"So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of it.  I want my luggage."
+
+"Please to come to the van and point it out, sir.  Be good enough to look
+very sharp, sir.  Not a moment to spare."
+
+The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller hurried after
+him.  The guard got into it, and the traveller looked into it.
+
+"Those two large black portmanteaus in the corner where your light
+shines.  Those are mine."
+
+"Name upon 'em, sir?"
+
+"Barbox Brothers."
+
+"Stand clear, sir, if you please.  One.  Two.  Right!"
+
+Lamp waved.  Signal lights ahead already changing.  Shriek from engine.
+Train gone.
+
+"Mugby Junction!" said the traveller, pulling up the woollen muffler
+round his throat with both hands.  "At past three o'clock of a
+tempestuous morning!  So!"
+
+He spoke to himself.  There was no one else to speak to.  Perhaps, though
+there had been any one else to speak to, he would have preferred to speak
+to himself.  Speaking to himself, he spoke to a man within five years of
+fifty either way, who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire; a
+man of pondering habit, brooding carriage of the head, and suppressed
+internal voice; a man with many indications on him of having been much
+alone.
+
+He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the rain and by the
+wind.  Those two vigilant assailants made a rush at him.  "Very well,"
+said he, yielding.  "It signifies nothing to me, to what quarter I turn
+my face."
+
+Thus, at Mugby Junction, at past three o'clock of a tempestuous morning,
+the traveller went where the weather drove him.
+
+Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, coming to
+the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable extent at Mugby
+Junction) and looking out upon the dark night, with a yet darker
+spirit-wing of storm beating its wild way through it, he faced about, and
+held his own as ruggedly in the difficult direction, as he had held it in
+the easier one.  Thus, with a steady step, the traveller went up and
+down, up and down, up and down, seeking nothing, and finding it.
+
+A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black
+hours of the four-and-twenty.  Mysterious goods trains, covered with
+palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves
+guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their
+freight had come to a secret and unlawful end.  Half miles of coal
+pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when
+they stop, backing when they back.  Red hot embers showering out upon the
+ground, down this dark avenue, and down the other, as if torturing fires
+were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds
+invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their
+suffering.  Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the
+drooping beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths
+too: at least they have long icicles (or what seem so) hanging from their
+lips.  Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white
+characters.  An earthquake accompanied with thunder and lightning, going
+up express to London.
+
+Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps
+extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe drawn
+over its head, like Caesar.  Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded
+up and down, a shadowy train went by him in the gloom which was no other
+than the train of a life.  From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or
+dark tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced,
+stealing upon him and passing away into obscurity.  Here, mournfully went
+by, a child who had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable
+from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man
+the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and
+oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman
+once beloved.  Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering
+cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a
+long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and unhappy existence.
+
+"--Yours, sir?"
+
+The traveller recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had been
+staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and perhaps the
+chance appropriateness, of the question.
+
+"O!  My thoughts were not here for the moment.  Yes.  Yes.  Those two
+portmanteaus are mine.  Are you a Porter?"
+
+"On Porter's wages, sir.  But I am Lamps."
+
+The traveller looked a little confused.
+
+"Who did you say you are?"
+
+"Lamps, sir," showing an oily cloth in his hand, as further explanation.
+
+"Surely, surely.  Is there any hotel or tavern here?"
+
+"Not exactly here, sir.  There is a Refreshment Room here, but--"  Lamps,
+with a mighty serious look, gave his head a warning roll that plainly
+added--"but it's a blessed circumstance for you that it's not open."
+
+"You couldn't recommend it, I see, if it was available?"
+
+"Ask your pardon, sir.  If it was--?"
+
+"Open?"
+
+"It ain't my place, as a paid servant of the company to give my opinion
+on any of the company's toepics," he pronounced it more like toothpicks,
+"beyond lamp-ile and cottons," returned Lamps, in a confidential tone;
+"but speaking as a man, I wouldn't recommend my father (if he was to come
+to life again) to go and try how he'd be treated at the Refreshment Room.
+Not speaking as a man, no, I would _not_."
+
+The traveller nodded conviction.  "I suppose I can put up in the town?
+There is a town here?"  For the traveller (though a stay-at-home compared
+with most travellers) had been, like many others, carried on the steam
+winds and the iron tides through that Junction before, without having
+ever, as one might say, gone ashore there.
+
+"O yes, there's a town, sir.  Anyways there's town enough to put up in.
+But," following the glance of the other at his luggage, "this is a very
+dead time of the night with us, sir.  The deadest time.  I might a'most
+call it our deadest and buriedest time."
+
+"No porters about?"
+
+"Well, sir, you see," returned Lamps, confidential again, "they in
+general goes off with the gas.  That's how it is.  And they seem to have
+overlooked you, through your walking to the furder end of the platform.
+But in about twelve minutes or so, she may be up."
+
+"Who may be up?"
+
+"The three forty-two, sir.  She goes off in a sidin' till the Up X
+passes, and then she," here an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded Lamps,
+"doos all as lays in her power."
+
+"I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement."
+
+"I doubt if anybody do, sir.  She's a Parliamentary, sir.  And, you see,
+a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun--"
+
+"Do you mean an Excursion?"
+
+"That's it, sir.--A Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun, she mostly _doos_ go
+off into a sidin'.  But when she _can_ get a chance, she's whistled out
+of it, and she's whistled up into doin' all as," Lamps again wore the air
+of a highly sanguine man who hoped for the best, "all as lays in her
+power."
+
+He then explained that porters on duty being required to be in attendance
+on the Parliamentary matron in question, would doubtless turn up with the
+gas.  In the meantime, if the gentleman would not very much object to the
+smell of lamp-oil, and would accept the warmth of his little room.--The
+gentleman being by this time very cold, instantly closed with the
+proposal.
+
+A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive to the sense of smell, of a
+cabin in a Whaler.  But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty
+grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed and
+lighted lamps, ready for carriage service.  They made a bright show, and
+their light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, as
+borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by
+the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen
+shoulders on the adjacent wall.  Various untidy shelves accommodated a
+quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what
+looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of the whole lamp family.
+
+As Barbox Brothers (so to call the traveller on the warranty of his
+luggage) took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved hands
+at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched with
+ink, which his elbow touched.  Upon it, were some scraps of coarse paper,
+and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances.
+
+From glancing at the scraps of paper, he turned involuntarily to his
+host, and said, with some roughness--
+
+"Why, you are never a poet, man!"
+
+Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as he stood
+modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly oily,
+that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself for one of his
+charges.  He was a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers' time of life,
+with his features whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by
+the roots of his hair.  He had a peculiarly shining transparent
+complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and
+his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, and standing
+straight up on end as if it in its turn were attracted by some invisible
+magnet above it, the top of his head was not very unlike a lamp-wick.
+
+"But to be sure it's no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers.  "That
+was an impertinent observation on my part.  Be what you like."
+
+"Some people, sir," remarked Lamps, in a tone of apology, "are sometimes
+what they don't like."
+
+"Nobody knows that better than I do," sighed the other.  "I have been
+what I don't like, all my life."
+
+"When I first took, sir," resumed Lamps, "to composing little
+Comic-Songs-like--"
+
+Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour.
+
+"--To composing little Comic-Songs-like--and what was more hard--to
+singing 'em afterwards," said Lamps, "it went against the grain at that
+time, it did indeed."
+
+Something that was not all oil here shining in Lamps's eye, Barbox
+Brothers withdrew his own a little disconcerted, looked at the fire, and
+put a foot on the top bar.  "Why did you do it, then?" he asked, after a
+short pause; abruptly enough but in a softer tone.  "If you didn't want
+to do it, why did you do it?  Where did you sing them?  Public-house?"
+
+To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply: "Bedside."
+
+At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for elucidation, Mugby
+Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its gas eyes.
+"She's got up!" Lamps announced, excited.  "What lays in her power is
+sometimes more, and sometimes less; but it's laid in her power to get up
+to-night, by George!"
+
+The legend "Barbox Brothers" in large white letters on two black
+surfaces, was very soon afterwards trundling on a truck through a silent
+street, and, when the owner of the legend had shivered on the pavement
+half an hour, what time the porter's knocks at the Inn Door knocked up
+the whole town first, and the Inn last, he groped his way into the close
+air of a shut-up house, and so groped between the sheets of a shut-up bed
+that seemed to have been expressly refrigerated for him when last made.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"You remember me, Young Jackson?"
+
+"What do I remember if not you?  You are my first remembrance.  It was
+you who told me that was my name.  It was you who told me that on every
+twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called
+a birthday.  I suppose the last communication was truer than the first!"
+
+"What am I like, Young Jackson?"
+
+"You are like a blight all through the year, to me.  You hard-lined,
+thin-lipped, repressive, changeless woman with a wax mask on.  You are
+like the Devil to me; most of all when you teach me religious things, for
+you make me abhor them."
+
+"You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?"  In another voice from another
+quarter.
+
+"Most gratefully, sir.  You were the ray of hope and prospering ambition
+in my life.  When I attended your course, I believed that I should come
+to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy--even though I was still
+the one boarder in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank
+in silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day.  As I had
+done every, every, every day, through my school-time and from my earliest
+recollection."
+
+"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"
+
+"You are like a Superior Being to me.  You are like Nature beginning to
+reveal herself to me.  I hear you again, as one of the hushed crowd of
+young men kindling under the power of your presence and knowledge, and
+you bring into my eyes the only exultant tears that ever stood in them."
+
+"You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?"  In a grating voice from quite
+another quarter.
+
+"Too well.  You made your ghostly appearance in my life one day, and
+announced that its course was to be suddenly and wholly changed.  You
+showed me which was my wearisome seat in the Galley of Barbox Brothers.
+(When _they_ were, if they ever were, is unknown to me; there was nothing
+of them but the name when I bent to the oar.)  You told me what I was to
+do, and what to be paid; you told me afterwards, at intervals of years,
+when I was to sign for the Firm, when I became a partner, when I became
+the Firm.  I know no more of it, or of myself."
+
+"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"
+
+"You are like my father, I sometimes think.  You are hard enough and cold
+enough so to have brought up an unacknowledged son.  I see your scanty
+figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too,
+wear a wax mask to your death.  You never by a chance remove it--it never
+by a chance falls off--and I know no more of you."
+
+Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at his window in
+the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction over-night.  And
+as he had then looked in the darkness, a man who had turned grey too
+soon, like a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sunlight, an ashier
+grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.
+
+The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some offshoot or irregular branch of
+the Public Notary and bill-broking tree.  It had gained for itself a
+griping reputation before the days of Young Jackson, and the reputation
+had stuck to it and to him.  As he had imperceptibly come into possession
+of the dim den up in the corner of a court off Lombard-street, on whose
+grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had for many long years
+daily interposed itself between him and the sky, so he had insensibly
+found himself a personage held in chronic distrust, whom it was essential
+to screw tight to every transaction in which he engaged, whose word was
+never to be taken without his attested bond, whom all dealers with openly
+set up guards and wards against.  This character had come upon him
+through no act of his own.  It was as if the original Barbox had
+stretched himself down upon the office-floor, and had thither caused to
+be conveyed Young Jackson in his sleep, and had there effected a
+metempsychosis and exchange of persons with him.  The discovery--aided in
+its turn by the deceit of the only woman he had ever loved, and the
+deceit of the only friend he had ever made: who eloped from him to be
+married together--the discovery, so followed up, completed what his
+earliest rearing had begun.  He shrank, abashed, within the form of
+Barbox, and lifted up his head and heart no more.
+
+But he did at last effect one great release in his condition.  He broke
+the oar he had plied so long, and he scuttled and sank the galley.  He
+prevented the gradual retirement of an old conventional business from
+him, by taking the initiative and retiring from it.  With enough to live
+on (though after all with not too much), he obliterated the firm of
+Barbox Brothers from the pages of the Post-office Directory and the face
+of the earth, leaving nothing of it but its name on two portmanteaus.
+
+"For one must have some name in going about, for people to pick up," he
+explained to Mugby High-street, through the Inn-window, "and that name at
+least was real once.  Whereas, Young Jackson!--Not to mention its being a
+sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson."
+
+He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, passing along on
+the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day's dinner
+in a small bundle that might have been larger without suspicion of
+gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a great pace.
+
+"There's Lamps!" said Barbox Brother.  "And by-the-by--"
+
+Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet
+three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing
+his chin in the street, in a brown study about Comic Songs.
+
+"Bedside?" said Barbox Brothers, testily.  "Sings them at the bedside?
+Why at the bedside, unless he goes to bed drunk?  Does, I shouldn't
+wonder.  But it's no business of mine.  Let me see.  Mugby Junction,
+Mugby Junction.  Where shall I go next?  As it came into my head last
+night when I woke from an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself
+here, I can go anywhere from here.  Where shall I go?  I'll go and look
+at the Junction by daylight.  There's no hurry, and I may like the look
+of one Line better than another."
+
+But there were so many Lines.  Gazing down upon them from a bridge at the
+Junction, it was as if the concentrating Companies formed a great
+Industrial Exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground-spiders that
+spun iron.  And then so many of the Lines went such wonderful ways, so
+crossing and curving among one another, that the eye lost them.  And then
+some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five
+hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant
+barrier, or turned off into a workshop.  And then others, like
+intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued
+round and came back again.  And then others were so chock-full of trucks
+of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so
+gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled
+objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and
+clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle
+wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like
+their masters on strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end, to
+the bewilderment.
+
+Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right hand
+across the lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he looked down,
+as if the railway Lines were getting themselves photographed on that
+sensitive plate.  Then, was heard a distant ringing of bells and blowing
+of whistles.  Then, puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in
+perspective, and popped in again.  Then, prodigious wooden razors set up
+on end, began shaving the atmosphere.  Then, several locomotive engines
+in several directions began to scream and be agitated.  Then, along one
+avenue a train came in.  Then, along another two trains appeared that
+didn't come in, but stopped without.  Then, bits of trains broke off.
+Then, a struggling horse became involved with them.  Then, the
+locomotives shared the bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.
+
+"I have not made my next move much clearer by this.  No hurry.  No need
+to make up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the day after.  I'll
+take a walk."
+
+It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk tended to
+the platform at which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room.  But Lamps
+was not in his room.  A pair of velveteen shoulders were adapting
+themselves to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps's fireplace,
+but otherwise the room was void.  In passing back to get out of the
+station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight of
+Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping along the top of a train,
+from carriage to carriage, and catching lighted namesakes thrown up to
+him by a coadjutor.
+
+"He is busy.  He has not much time for composing or singing Comic Songs
+this morning, I take it."
+
+The direction he pursued now, was into the country, keeping very near to
+the side of one great Line of railway, and within easy view of others.
+"I have half a mind," he said, glancing around, "to settle the question
+from this point, by saying, 'I'll take this set of rails, or that, or
+t'other, and stick to it.'  They separate themselves from the confusion,
+out here, and go their ways."
+
+Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, he came to a few cottages.
+There, looking about him as a very reserved man might who had never
+looked about him in his life before, he saw some six or eight young
+children come merrily trooping and whooping from one of the cottages, and
+disperse.  But not until they had all turned at the little garden gate,
+and kissed their hands to a face at the upper window: a low window
+enough, although the upper, for the cottage had but a story of one room
+above the ground.
+
+Now, that the children should do this was nothing; but that they should
+do this to a face lying on the sill of the open window, turned towards
+them in a horizontal position, and apparently only a face, was something
+noticeable.  He looked up at the window again.  Could only see a very
+fragile though a very bright face, lying on one cheek on the window-sill.
+The delicate smiling face of a girl or woman.  Framed in long bright
+brown hair, round which was tied a light blue band or fillet, passing
+under the chin.
+
+He walked on, turned back, passed the window again, shyly glanced up
+again.  No change.  He struck off by a winding branch-road at the top of
+the hill--which he must otherwise have descended--kept the cottages in
+view, worked his way round at a distance so as to come out once more into
+the main road and be obliged to pass the cottages again.  The face still
+lay on the window-sill, but not so much inclined towards him.  And now
+there were a pair of delicate hands too.  They had the action of
+performing on some musical instrument, and yet it produced no sound that
+reached his ears.
+
+"Mugby Junction must be the maddest place in England," said Barbox
+Brothers, pursuing his way down the hill.  "The first thing I find here
+is a Railway Porter who composes comic songs to sing at his bedside.  The
+second thing I find here is a face, and a pair of hands playing a musical
+instrument that don't play!"
+
+The day was a fine bright day in the early beginning of November, the air
+was clear and inspiriting, and the landscape was rich in beautiful
+colours.  The prevailing colours in the court off Lombard-street, London
+city, had been few and sombre.  Sometimes, when the weather elsewhere was
+very bright indeed, the dwellers in those tents enjoyed a
+pepper-and-salt-coloured day or two, but their atmosphere's usual wear
+was slate, or snuff colour.
+
+He relished his walk so well, that he repeated it next day.  He was a
+little earlier at the cottage than on the day before, and he could hear
+the children up-stairs singing to a regular measure and clapping out the
+time with their hands.
+
+"Still, there is no sound of any musical instrument," he said, listening
+at the corner, "and yet I saw the performing hands again, as I came by.
+What are the children singing?  Why, good Lord, they can never be singing
+the multiplication-table!"
+
+They were though, and with infinite enjoyment.  The mysterious face had a
+voice attached to it which occasionally led or set the children right.
+Its musical cheerfulness was delightful.  The measure at length stopped,
+and was succeeded by a murmuring of young voices, and then by a short
+song which he made out to be about the current month of the year, and
+about what work it yielded to the labourers in the fields and farm-yards.
+Then, there was a stir of little feet, and the children came trooping and
+whooping out, as on the previous day.  And again, as on the previous day,
+they all turned at the garden gate, and kissed their hands--evidently to
+the face on the window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired post
+of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.
+
+But as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler--a brown
+faced boy with flaxen hair--and said to him:
+
+"Come here, little one.  Tell me whose house is that?"
+
+The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in shyness,
+and half ready for defence, said from behind the inside of his elbow:
+
+"Phoebe's."
+
+"And who," said Barbox Brothers, quite as much embarrassed by his part in
+the dialogue as the child could possibly be by his, "is Phoebe?"
+
+To which the child made answer: "Why, Phoebe, of course."
+
+The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, and had
+taken his moral measure.  He lowered his guard, and rather assumed a tone
+with him: as having discovered him to be an unaccustomed person in the
+art of polite conversation.
+
+"Phoebe," said the child, "can't be anybobby else but Phoebe.  Can she?"
+
+"No, I suppose not."
+
+"Well," returned the child, "then why did you ask me?"
+
+Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took up a new
+position.
+
+"What do you do there?  Up there in that room where the open window is.
+What do you do there?"
+
+"Cool," said the child.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Co-o-ol," the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the word
+with a fixed look and great emphasis, as much as to say: "What's the use
+of your having grown up, if you're such a donkey as not to understand
+me?"
+
+"Ah!  School, school," said Barbox Brothers.  "Yes, yes, yes.  And Phoebe
+teaches you?"
+
+The child nodded.
+
+"Good boy."
+
+"Tound it out, have you?" said the child.
+
+"Yes, I have found it out.  What would you do with twopence, if I gave it
+you?"
+
+"Pend it."
+
+The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg to stand
+upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great lameness, and
+withdrew in a state of humiliation.
+
+But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the cottage, he
+acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which was not a nod, not
+a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, but was a diffident
+compromise between or struggle with all three.  The eyes in the face
+seemed amused, or cheered, or both, and the lips modestly said: "Good day
+to you, sir."
+
+"I find I must stick for a time to Mugby Junction," said Barbox Brothers,
+with much gravity, after once more stopping on his return road to look at
+the Lines where they went their several ways so quietly.  "I can't make
+up my mind yet, which iron road to take.  In fact, I must get a little
+accustomed to the Junction before I can decide."
+
+So, he announced at the Inn that he was "going to stay on, for the
+present," and improved his acquaintance with the Junction that night, and
+again next morning, and again next night and morning: going down to the
+station, mingling with the people there, looking about him down all the
+avenues of railway, and beginning to take an interest in the incomings
+and outgoings of the trains.  At first, he often put his head into
+Lamps's little room, but he never found Lamps there.  A pair or two of
+velveteen shoulders he usually found there, stooping over the fire,
+sometimes in connexion with a clasped knife and a piece of bread and
+meat; but the answer to his inquiry, "Where's Lamps?" was, either that he
+was "t'other side the line," or, that it was his off-time, or (in the
+latter case), his own personal introduction to another Lamps who was not
+his Lamps.  However, he was not so desperately set upon seeing Lamps now,
+but he bore the disappointment.  Nor did he so wholly devote himself to
+his severe application to the study of Mugby Junction, as to neglect
+exercise.  On the contrary, he took a walk every day, and always the same
+walk.  But the weather turned cold and wet again, and the window was
+never open.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another streak of fine
+bright hardy autumn weather.  It was a Saturday.  The window was open,
+and the children were gone.  Not surprising, this, for he had patiently
+watched and waited at the corner, until they _were_ gone.
+
+"Good day," he said to the face; absolutely getting his hat clear off his
+head this time.
+
+"Good day to you, sir."
+
+"I am glad you have a fine sky again, to look at."
+
+"Thank you, sir.  It is kind of you."
+
+"You are an invalid, I fear?"
+
+"No, sir.  I have very good health."
+
+"But are you not always lying down?"
+
+"O yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit up.  But I am not an
+invalid."
+
+The laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great mistake.
+
+"Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, sir?  There is a beautiful
+view from this window.  And you would see that I am not at all ill--being
+so good as to care."
+
+It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute, but evidently desiring
+to enter, with his diffident hand on the latch of the garden gate.  It
+did help him, and he went in.
+
+The room up-stairs was a very clean white room with a low roof.  Its only
+inmate lay on a couch that brought her face on a level with the window.
+The couch was white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light
+blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a
+fanciful appearance of lying among clouds.  He felt that she
+instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it
+was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily,
+and got it over.
+
+There was an awkward constraint upon him, nevertheless, as he touched her
+hand, and took a chair at the side of her couch.
+
+"I see now," he began, not at all fluently, "how you occupy your hands.
+Only seeing you from the path outside, I thought you were playing upon
+something."
+
+She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace.  A
+lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick movements and changes of
+her hands upon it as she worked, had given them the action he had
+misinterpreted.
+
+"That is curious," she answered, with a bright smile.  "For I often
+fancy, myself, that I play tunes while I am at work."
+
+"Have you any musical knowledge?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any instrument, which could be
+made as handy to me as my lace-pillow.  But I dare say I deceive myself.
+At all events, I shall never know."
+
+"You have a musical voice.  Excuse me; I have heard you sing."
+
+"With the children?" she answered, slightly colouring.  "O yes.  I sing
+with the dear children, if it can be called singing."
+
+Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, and hazarded
+the speculation that she was fond of children, and that she was learned
+in new systems of teaching them?  "Very fond of them," she said, shaking
+her head again; "but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I
+have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when they learn.  Perhaps your
+overhearing my little scholars sing some of their lessons, has led you so
+far astray as to think me a grand teacher?  Ah! I thought so!  No, I have
+only read and been told about that system.  It seemed so pretty and
+pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Robins they are, that I
+took up with it in my little way.  You don't need to be told what a very
+little way mine is, sir," she added, with a glance at the small forms and
+round the room.
+
+All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow.  As they still
+continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversation in
+the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of
+observing her.  He guessed her to be thirty.  The charm of her
+transparent face and large bright brown eyes, was, not that they were
+passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful.
+Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have
+besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere
+compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, and an
+impertinence.
+
+He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed his
+towards the prospect, saying: "Beautiful indeed!"
+
+"Most beautiful, sir.  I have sometimes had a fancy that I would like to
+sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head.  But what a
+foolish fancy that would be to encourage!  It cannot look more lovely to
+any one than it does to me."
+
+Her eyes were turned to it as she spoke, with most delighted admiration
+and enjoyment.  There was not a trace in it of any sense of deprivation.
+
+"And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam
+changing places so fast, make it so lively for me," she went on.  "I
+think of the number of people who _can_ go where they wish, on their
+business, or their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me
+that they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the prospect
+with abundance of company, if I want company.  There is the great
+Junction, too.  I don't see it under the foot of the hill, but I can very
+often hear it, and I always know it is there.  It seems to join me, in a
+way, to I don't know how many places and things that _I_ shall never
+see."
+
+With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined himself to
+something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: "Just so."
+
+"And so you see, sir," pursued Phoebe, "I am not the invalid you thought
+me, and I am very well off indeed."
+
+"You have a happy disposition," said Barbox Brothers: perhaps with a
+slight excusatory touch for his own disposition.
+
+"Ah!  But you should know my father," she replied.  "His is the happy
+disposition!--Don't mind, sir!"  For his reserve took the alarm at a step
+upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a
+troublesome intruder.  "This is my father coming."
+
+The door opened, and the father paused there.
+
+"Why, Lamps!" exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair.  "How
+do you do, Lamps?"
+
+To which, Lamps responded: "The gentleman for Nowhere!  How do you DO,
+sir?"
+
+And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamps's
+daughter.
+
+"I have looked you up, half a dozen times since that night," said Barbox
+Brothers, "but have never found you."
+
+"So I've heerd on, sir, so I've heerd on," returned Lamps.  "It's your
+being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train,
+that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere.
+No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope,
+sir?"
+
+"None at all.  It's as good a name for me as any other you could call me
+by.  But may I ask you a question in the corner here?"
+
+Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter's couch, by one
+of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.
+
+"Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?"
+
+Lamps nodded.
+
+The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder; and they faced
+about again.
+
+"Upon my word, my dear," said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from
+her to her visitor, "it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought
+acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will
+excuse me) take a rounder."
+
+Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily
+handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an
+elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the
+forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear.  After this
+operation he shone exceedingly.
+
+"It's according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation,
+sir," he offered by way of apology.  "And really, I am throwed into that
+state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phoebe, that
+I--that I think I will, if you'll excuse me, take another rounder."
+Which he did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.
+
+They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working
+at her lace-pillow.  "Your daughter tells me," said Barbox Brothers,
+still in a half reluctant shamefaced way, "that she never sits up."
+
+"No, sir, nor never has done.  You see, her mother (who died when she was
+a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had
+never mentioned to me that she _was_ subject to fits, they couldn't be
+guarded against.  Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this
+happened."
+
+"It was very wrong of her," said Barbox Brothers, with a knitted brow,
+"to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity."
+
+"Well, sir," pleaded Lamps, in behalf of the long-deceased.  "You see,
+Phoebe and me, we have talked that over too.  And Lord bless us!  Such a
+number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits,
+of one sort and another, that if we confessed to 'em all before we got
+married, most of us might never get married."
+
+"Might not that be for the better?"
+
+"Not in this case, sir," said Phoebe, giving her hand to her father.
+
+"No, not in this case, sir," said her father, patting it between his own.
+
+"You correct me," returned Barbox Brothers, with a blush; "and I must
+look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to
+confess to _that_ infirmity.  I wish you would tell me a little more
+about yourselves.  I hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am conscious
+that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I
+wish you would."
+
+"With all our hearts, sir," returned Lamps, gaily, for both.  "And first
+of all, that you may know my name--"
+
+"Stay!" interposed the visitor, with a slight flush.  "What signifies
+your name!  Lamps is name enough for me.  I like it.  It is bright and
+expressive.  What do I want more!"
+
+"Why to be sure, sir," returned Lamps.  "I have in general no other name
+down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a
+first-class single, in a private character, that you might--"
+
+The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged
+the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.
+
+"You are hard-worked, I take for granted?" said Barbox Brothers, when the
+subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than he went into it.
+
+Lamps was beginning, "Not particular so"--when his daughter took him up.
+
+"O yes, sir, he is very hard-worked.  Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, hours
+a day.  Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time."
+
+"And you," said Barbox Brothers, "what with your school, Phoebe, and what
+with your lace-making--"
+
+"But my school is a pleasure to me," she interrupted, opening her brown
+eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse.  "I began it when I
+was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company,
+don't you see?  _That_ was not work.  I carry it on still, because it
+keeps children about me.  _That_ is not work.  I do it as love, not as
+work.  Then my lace-pillow;" her busy hands had stopped, as if her
+argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at
+the name; "it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my
+tunes when I hum any, and _that's_ not work.  Why, you yourself thought
+it was music, you know, sir.  And so it is, to me."
+
+"Everything is!" cried Lamps, radiantly.  "Everything is music to her,
+sir."
+
+"My father is, at any rate," said Phoebe, exultingly pointing her thin
+forefinger at him.  "There is more music in my father than there is in a
+brass band."
+
+"I say!  My dear!  It's very fillyillially done, you know; but you are
+flattering your father," he protested, sparkling.
+
+"No I am not, sir, I assure you.  No I am not.  If you could hear my
+father sing, you would know I am not.  But you never will hear him sing,
+because he never sings to any one but me.  However tired he is, he always
+sings to me when he comes home.  When I lay here long ago, quite a poor
+little broken doll, he used to sing to me.  More than that, he used to
+make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us.  More
+than that, he often does so to this day.  O! I'll tell of you, father, as
+the gentleman has asked about you.  He is a poet, sir."
+
+"I shouldn't wish the gentleman, my dear," observed Lamps, for the moment
+turning grave, "to carry away that opinion of your father, because it
+might look as if I was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner
+what they was up to.  Which I wouldn't at once waste the time, and take
+the liberty, my dear."
+
+"My father," resumed Phoebe, amending her text, "is always on the bright
+side, and the good side.  You told me just now, I had a happy
+disposition.  How can I help it?"
+
+"Well! but my dear," returned Lamps argumentatively, "how can _I_ help
+it?  Put it to yourself, sir.  Look at her.  Always as you see her now.
+Always working--and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a
+week--always contented, always lively, always interested in others, of
+all sorts.  I said, this moment, she was always as you see her now.  So
+she is, with a difference that comes to much the same.  For, when it's my
+Sunday off and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers
+and thanks read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to
+me--so soft, sir, that you couldn't hear 'em out of this room--in notes
+that seem to me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it."
+
+It might have been merely through the association of these words with
+their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger
+association of the words with the Redeemer's presence beside the
+bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the
+lace-pillow, and clasped themselves round his neck as he bent down.
+There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the
+visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the other's sake,
+retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or
+acquired, was either the first or second nature of both.  In a very few
+moments, Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features
+beaming, while Phoebe's laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon
+their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and
+to Barbox Brothers.
+
+"When my father, sir," she said brightly, "tells you about my being
+interested in other people even though they know nothing about me--which,
+by-the-by, I told you myself--you ought to know how that comes about.
+That's my father's doing."
+
+"No, it isn't!" he protested.
+
+"Don't you believe him, sir; yes, it is.  He tells me of everything he
+sees down at his work.  You would be surprised what a quantity he gets
+together for me every day.  He looks into the carriages, and tells me how
+the ladies are drest--so that I know all the fashions!  He looks into the
+carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, and what
+new-married couples on their wedding trip--so that I know all about that!
+He collects chance newspapers and books--so that I have plenty to read!
+He tells me about the sick people who are travelling to try to get
+better--so that I know all about them!  In short, as I began by saying,
+he tells me everything he sees and makes out, down at his work, and you
+can't think what a quantity he does see and make out."
+
+"As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear," said Lamps, "it's clear
+I can have no merit in that, because they're not my perquisites.  You
+see, sir, it's this way: A Guard, he'll say to me, 'Hallo, here you are,
+Lamps.  I've saved this paper for your daughter.  How is she agoing on?'
+A Head-Porter, he'll say to me, 'Here!  Catch hold, Lamps.  Here's a
+couple of wollumes for your daughter.  Is she pretty much where she
+were?'  And that's what makes it double welcome, you see.  If she had a
+thousand pound in' a box, they wouldn't trouble themselves about her; but
+being what she is--that is, you understand," Lamps added, somewhat
+hurriedly, "not having a thousand pound in a box--they take thought for
+her.  And as concerning the young pairs, married and unmarried, it's only
+natural I should bring home what little I can about _them_, seeing that
+there's not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood that don't come
+of their own accord to confide in Phoebe."
+
+She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers, as she said:
+
+"Indeed, sir, that is true.  If I could have got up and gone to church, I
+don't know how often I should have been a bridesmaid.  But if I could
+have done that, some girls in love might have been jealous of me, and as
+it is, no girl is jealous of me.  And my pillow would not have been half
+as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I always find it," she added,
+turning her face on it with a light sigh, and a smile at her father.
+
+The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an
+understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic
+of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a
+pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her
+height.  He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that if
+Phoebe had no objection, he would come again.
+
+He had muttered that he would come "in the course of his walks."  The
+course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his return, for
+he returned after an interval of a single day.
+
+"You thought you would never see me any more, I suppose?" he said to
+Phoebe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch.
+
+"Why should I think so!" was her surprised rejoinder.
+
+"I took it for granted you would mistrust me."
+
+"For granted, sir?  Have you been so much mistrusted?"
+
+"I think I am justified in answering yes.  But I may have mistrusted too,
+on my part.  No matter just now.  We were speaking of the Junction last
+time.  I have passed hours there since the day before yesterday."
+
+"Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?" she asked with a smile.
+
+"Certainly for Somewhere; but I don't yet know Where.  You would never
+guess what I am travelling from.  Shall I tell you?  I am travelling from
+my birthday."
+
+Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with incredulous
+astonishment.
+
+"Yes," said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, "from my
+birthday.  I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier
+chapters all torn out, and thrown away.  My childhood had no grace of
+childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from
+such a lost beginning?"  His eyes meeting hers as they were addressed
+intently to him, something seemed to stir within his breast, whispering:
+"Was this bed a place for the graces of childhood and the charms of youth
+to take to, kindly?  O shame, shame!"
+
+"It is a disease with me," said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, and
+making as though he had a difficulty in swallowing something, "to go
+wrong about that.  I don't know how I came to speak of that.  I hope it
+is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex involving an
+old bitter treachery.  I don't know.  I am all wrong together."
+
+Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work.  Glancing at her, he saw
+that her eyes were thoughtfully following them.
+
+"I am travelling from my birthday," he resumed, "because it has always
+been a dreary day to me.  My first free birthday coming round some five
+or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its predecessors far behind
+me, and to try to crush the day--or, at all events, put it out of my
+sight--by heaping new objects on it."
+
+As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as being quite
+at a loss.
+
+"This is unintelligible to your happy disposition," he pursued, abiding
+by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue of
+self-defence in it: "I knew it would be, and am glad it is.  However, on
+this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, having
+abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you heard from your
+father, at the Junction here.  The extent of its ramifications quite
+confused me as to whither I should go, _from_ here.  I have not yet
+settled, being still perplexed among so many roads.  What do you think I
+mean to do?  How many of the branching roads can you see from your
+window?"
+
+Looking out, full of interest, she answered, "Seven."
+
+"Seven," said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile.  "Well! I
+propose to myself, at once to reduce the gross number to those very
+seven, and gradually to fine them down to one--the most promising for
+me--and to take that."
+
+"But how will you know, sir, which is the most promising?" she asked,
+with her brightened eyes roving over the view.
+
+"Ah!" said Barbox Brothers, with another grave smile, and considerably
+improving in his ease of speech.  "To be sure.  In this way.  Where your
+father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and
+again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose.  The gentleman for
+Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction.  He shall
+continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen,
+heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road
+itself.  And so his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice
+among his discoveries."
+
+Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if it
+comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed as if
+it yielded her new pleasure.
+
+"But I must not forget," said Barbox Brothers, "(having got so far) to
+ask a favour.  I want your help in this expedient of mine.  I want to
+bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie
+here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it.  May I?
+They say two heads are better than one.  I should say myself that
+probably depends upon the heads concerned.  But I am quite sure, though
+we are so newly acquainted, that your head and your father's have found
+out better things, Phoebe, than ever mine of itself discovered."
+
+She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with his
+proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.
+
+"That's well!" said Barbox Brothers.  "Again I must not forget (having
+got so far) to ask a favour.  Will you shut your eyes?"
+
+Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.
+
+"Keep them shut," said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and
+coming back.  "You are on your honour, mind, not to open your eyes until
+I tell you that you may?"
+
+"Yes!  On my honour."
+
+"Good.  May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?"
+
+Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put
+it aside.
+
+"Tell me.  Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning
+fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?"
+
+"Behind the elm-trees and the spire?"
+
+"That's the road," said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.
+
+"Yes.  I watched them melt away."
+
+"Anything unusual in what they expressed?"
+
+"No!" she answered merrily.
+
+"Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train.  I went--don't open
+your eyes--to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town.  It is not
+half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its
+place.  These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you
+supply the air required with your left hand.  May you pick out delightful
+music from it, my dear!  For the present--you can open your eyes
+now--good-bye!"
+
+In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in
+doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and
+caressed it.  The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for
+so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, have
+taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child's
+voice.
+
+
+
+
+BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.
+
+
+With good will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere began, on
+the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven roads.  The
+results of his researches, as he and Phoebe afterwards set them down in
+fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle, from its
+seventeenth page, onward.  But they occupied a much longer time in the
+getting together than they ever will in the perusal.  And this is
+probably the case with most reading matter, except when it is of that
+highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is "thrown off in a few
+moments of leisure" by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take
+prose pains.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried himself.
+His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in it.  There was
+the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes sitting by,
+listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more discourse from her
+musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear refined daily upon
+her first discoveries.  Besides being a pleasure, this was an occupation,
+and in the course of weeks it consumed hours.  It resulted that his
+dreaded birthday was close upon him before he had troubled himself any
+more about it.
+
+The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance that the
+councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few
+rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected, were, after
+all, in no wise assisted by his investigations.  For, he had connected
+this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could
+deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference.
+Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business
+stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.
+
+"But, sir," remarked Phoebe, "we have only six roads after all.  Is the
+seventh road dumb?"
+
+"The seventh road?  O!" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin.  "That is
+the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present.  That
+is _its_ story, Phoebe."
+
+"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with hesitation.
+
+"Not in the least; it is a great high road after all."
+
+"I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe, with a persuasive smile,
+"for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me.  I
+should like you to take it, because that road can never be again, like
+any other road to me.  I should like you to take it, in remembrance of
+your having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier!
+If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this
+great kindness," sounding a faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel,
+lying here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a
+prosperous end, and bring you back some day."
+
+"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."
+
+So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his
+destination was the great ingenious town.
+
+He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of
+December when he left it.  "High time," he reflected, as he seated
+himself in the train, "that I started in earnest!  Only one clear day
+remains between me and the day I am running away from.  I'll push onward
+for the hill-country to-morrow.  I'll go to Wales."
+
+It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable
+advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses
+from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and
+rugged roads.  And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he
+could have wished.  Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource,
+her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now--just at
+first--that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of
+steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her;
+whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of
+the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her
+so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning
+of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a
+great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other
+similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture.  There was
+within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from
+an object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this
+sense, being quite new to him, made him restless.  Further, in losing
+Mugby Junction he had found himself again; and he was not the more
+enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better company.
+
+But surely, here not far ahead, must be the great ingenious town.  This
+crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and this coupling on
+to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean nothing less than approach
+to the great station.  It did mean nothing less.  After some stormy
+flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations of red-brick
+blocks of houses, high red-brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red-brick
+railway arches, tongues of fire, blots of smoke, valleys of canal, and
+hills of coal, there came the thundering in at the journey's end.
+
+Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, and
+having appointed his dinner-hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a walk in
+the busy streets.  And now it began to be suspected by him that Mugby
+Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as visible,
+and had joined him to an endless number of byways.  For, whereas he
+would, but a little while ago, have walked these streets blindly
+brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world.  How the
+many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it was to
+consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice distinctions of
+sight and touch, that separated them into classes of workers, and even
+into classes of workers at subdivisions of one complete whole which
+combined their many intelligences and forces, though of itself but some
+cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know
+that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution
+of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not
+deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious May-flies of
+humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect and yet a
+modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their
+well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a
+question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and
+amusements on the public walls); these considerations, and a host of
+such, made his walk a memorable one.  "I too am but a little part of a
+great whole," he began to think; "and to be serviceable to myself and
+others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of,
+the common stock."
+
+Although he had arrived at his journey's end for the day by noon, he had
+since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the
+lamplighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were
+sparkling up brilliantly.  Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he
+was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a
+very little voice said:
+
+"O!  If you please, I am lost."
+
+He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.
+
+"Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod.  "I am indeed.
+I am lost."
+
+Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried none,
+and said, bending low: "Where do you live, my child?"
+
+"I don't know where I live," she returned.  "I am lost."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Polly."
+
+"What is your other name?"
+
+The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.
+
+Imitating the sound, as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, "Trivits?"
+
+"O no!" said the child, shaking her head.  "Nothing like that."
+
+"Say it again, little one."
+
+An unpromising business.  For this time it had quite a different sound.
+
+He made the venture: "Paddens?"
+
+"O no!" said the child.  "Nothing like that."
+
+"Once more.  Let us try it again, dear."
+
+A most hopeless business.  This time it swelled into four syllables.  "It
+can't be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his
+hat in discomfiture.
+
+"No!  It ain't," the child quietly assented.
+
+On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary efforts
+at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least.
+
+"Ah! I think," said Barbox Brothers, with a desperate air of resignation,
+"that we had better give it up."
+
+"But I am lost," said the child, nestling her little hand more closely in
+his, "and you'll take care of me, won't you?"
+
+If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion on the one
+hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, here the man
+was.  "Lost!" he repeated, looking down at the child.  "I am sure _I_ am.
+What is to be done!"
+
+"Where do _you_ live?" asked the child, looking up at him, wistfully.
+
+"Over there," he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of his
+hotel.
+
+"Hadn't we better go there?" said the child.
+
+"Really," he replied, "I don't know but what we had."
+
+So they set off, hand in hand.  He, through comparison of himself against
+his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just
+developed into a foolish giant.  She, clearly elevated in her own tiny
+opinion by having got him so neatly out of his embarrassment.
+
+"We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?" said Polly.
+
+"Well," he rejoined, "I--yes, I suppose we are."
+
+"Do you like your dinner?" asked the child.
+
+"Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, "yes, I think I do."
+
+"I do mine," said Polly.  "Have you any brothers and sisters?"
+
+"No.  Have you?"
+
+"Mine are dead."
+
+"Oh!" said Barbox Brothers.  With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of
+mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known how to pursue
+the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was
+always ready for him.
+
+"What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "are you going
+to do to amuse me, after dinner?"
+
+"Upon my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, "I
+have not the slightest idea!"
+
+"Then I tell you what," said Polly.  "Have you got any cards at your
+house?"
+
+"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers, in a boastful vein.
+
+"Very well.  Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me.  You
+mustn't blow, you know."
+
+"O no!" said Barbox Brothers.  "No, no, no.  No blowing.  Blowing's not
+fair."
+
+He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic
+Monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his
+attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful
+opinion of himself by saying, compassionately: "What a funny man you
+are!"
+
+Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger
+and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a
+bad job.  No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by
+all-conquering Jack, than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.
+
+"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.
+
+He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "No."
+
+"What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" said Polly.
+
+He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "Yes."
+
+"Would you like me to teach you a story?  But you must remember it, you
+know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards."
+
+He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to
+be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavour to retain it in his
+mind.  Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his,
+expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of
+which every relishing clause began with the words: "So this" or "And so
+this."  As, "So this boy;" or, "So this fairy;" or, "And so this pie was
+four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep."  The interest of the
+romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this
+boy for having a greedy appetite.  To achieve which purpose, this fairy
+made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled
+and swelled and swelled.  There were many tributary circumstances, but
+the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie,
+and the bursting of this boy.  Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox
+Brothers, with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on
+the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of
+the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by and found deficient.
+
+Thus they arrived at the hotel.  And there he had to say at the bar, and
+said awkwardly enough: "I have found a little girl!"
+
+The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl.  Nobody
+knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth--except one
+chambermaid, who said it was Constantinople--which it wasn't.
+
+"I will dine with my young friend in a private room," said Barbox
+Brothers to the hotel authorities, "and perhaps you will be so good as
+let the police know that the pretty baby is here.  I suppose she is sure
+to be inquired for, soon, if she has not been already.  Come along,
+Polly."
+
+Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs
+rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers.  The dinner was a
+most transcendent success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly's
+directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over
+the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was another fine sight.
+
+"And now," said Polly, "while we are at dinner, you be good, and tell me
+that story I taught you."
+
+With the tremors of a civil service examination on him, and very
+uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie appeared in
+history, but also as to the measurements of that indispensable fact,
+Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under encouragement did very
+fairly.  There was a want of breadth observable in his rendering of the
+cheeks, as well as the appetite, of the boy; and there was a certain
+tameness in his fairy, referable to an under-current of desire to account
+for her.  Still, as the first lumbering performance of a good-humoured
+monster, it passed muster.
+
+"I told you to be good," said Polly, "and you are good, ain't you?"
+
+"I hope so," replied Barbox Brothers.
+
+Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of
+sofa-cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat or
+two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a
+gracious kiss.  In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to give
+him this last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and caused
+him to exclaim as he effected her rescue: "Gracious Angels!  Whew!  I
+thought we were in the fire, Polly!"
+
+"What a coward you are, ain't you?" said Polly, when replaced.
+
+"Yes, I am rather nervous," he replied.  "Whew!  Don't, Polly!  Don't
+flourish your spoon, or you'll go over sideways.  Don't tilt up your legs
+when you laugh, Polly, or you'll go over backwards.  Whew!  Polly, Polly,
+Polly," said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, "we are
+environed with dangers!"
+
+Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were yawning
+for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon a low
+stool.  "I will, if you will," said Polly.  So, as peace of mind should
+go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, bring a
+pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in Polly
+and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within the room.
+Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his footstool, with a
+pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly as she built successfully,
+and growing blue in the face with holding his breath, lest he should blow
+the house down.
+
+"How you stare, don't you?" said Polly, in a houseless pause.
+
+Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, apologetically:
+"I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly."
+
+"Why do you stare?" asked Polly.
+
+"I cannot," he murmured to himself, "recall why.--I don't know, Polly."
+
+"You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn't you?"
+said Polly.
+
+In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again, intently, as she
+bent her head over her card-structure, her rich curls shading her face.
+"It is impossible," he thought, "that I can ever have seen this pretty
+baby before.  Can I have dreamed of her?  In some sorrowful dream?"
+
+He could make nothing of it.  So he went into the building trade as a
+journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four stories
+high: even five.
+
+"I say.  Who do you think is coming?" asked Polly, rubbing her eyes after
+tea.
+
+He guessed: "The waiter?"
+
+"No," said Polly, "the dustman.  I am getting sleepy."
+
+A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!
+
+"I don't think I am going to be fetched to-night," said Polly; "what do
+you think?"
+
+He thought not, either.  After another quarter of an hour, the dustman
+not merely impending but actually arriving, recourse was had to the
+Constantinopolitan chambermaid: who cheerily undertook that the child
+should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she herself would
+share.
+
+"And I know you will be careful, won't you," said Barbox Brothers, as a
+new fear dawned upon him, "that she don't fall out of bed."
+
+Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the necessity
+of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on his footstool
+picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with her dimpled chin
+on his shoulder.
+
+"O what a coward you are, ain't you!" said Polly.  "Do _you_ fall out of
+bed?"
+
+"N--not generally, Polly."
+
+"No more do I."
+
+With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him going, and
+then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be swallowed up in
+the hand of the Constantinopolitan chambermaid, trotted off, chattering,
+without a vestige of anxiety.
+
+He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and chairs
+replaced, and still looked after her.  He paced the room for half an
+hour.  "A most engaging little creature, but it's not that.  A most
+winning little voice, but it's not that.  That has much to do with it,
+but there is something more.  How can it be that I seem to know this
+child?  What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch
+in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?"
+
+"Mr. Jackson!"
+
+With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and saw
+his answer standing at the door.
+
+"O Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me.  Speak a word of encouragement
+to me, I beseech you."
+
+"You are Polly's mother."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Yes.  Polly herself might come to this, one day.  As you see what the
+rose was, in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer growth of the
+woods was, in their wintry branches; so Polly might be traced, one day,
+in a care-worn woman like this, with her hair turned grey.  Before him,
+were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned bright.  This was the
+woman he had loved.  This was the woman he had lost.  Such had been the
+constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time spared her under its
+withholding, that now, seeing how roughly the inexorable hand had struck
+her, his soul was filled with pity and amazement.
+
+He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the
+chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half
+averted.
+
+"Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?"
+
+"I hope there is no deceit.  I said to her, 'We have lost our way, and I
+must try to find mine by myself.  Go to that gentleman and tell him you
+are lost.  You shall be fetched by-and-by.'  Perhaps you have not thought
+how very young she is?"
+
+"She is very self-reliant."
+
+"Perhaps because she is so young?"
+
+He asked, after a short pause, "Why did you do this?"
+
+"O Mr. Jackson, do you ask me?  In the hope that you might see something
+in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me.  Not only towards
+me, but towards my husband."
+
+He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the room.  He
+came back again with a slower step, and resumed his former attitude,
+saying:
+
+"I thought you had emigrated to America?"
+
+"We did.  But life went ill with us there, and we came back."
+
+"Do you live in this town?"
+
+"Yes.  I am a daily teacher of music here.  My husband is a book-keeper."
+
+"Are you--forgive my asking--poor?"
+
+"We earn enough for our wants.  That is not our distress.  My husband is
+very, very ill of a lingering disorder.  He will never recover--"
+
+"You check yourself.  If it is for want of the encouraging word you spoke
+of, take it from me.  I cannot forget the old time, Beatrice."
+
+"God bless you!" she replied, with a burst of tears, and gave him her
+trembling hand.
+
+"Compose yourself.  I cannot be composed if you are not, for to see you
+weep distresses me beyond expression.  Speak freely to me.  Trust me."
+
+She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while spoke calmly.
+Her voice had the ring of Polly's.
+
+"It is not that my husband's mind is at all impaired by his bodily
+suffering, for I assure you that is not the case.  But in his weakness,
+and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the
+ascendancy of one idea.  It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his
+painful life, and will shorten it."
+
+She stopping, he said again: "Speak freely to me.  Trust me."
+
+"We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie in their
+little graves.  He believes that they have withered away under a curse,
+and that it will blight this child like the rest."
+
+"Under what curse?"
+
+"Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily,
+and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my
+mind as he does.  This is the constant burden:--'I believe, Beatrice, I
+was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so
+much his junior.  The more influence he acquired in the business, the
+higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence.  I came
+between him and you, and I took you from him.  We were both secret, and
+the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared.  The anguish it caused a man
+so compressed, must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened,
+inappeasable.  So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor pretty little
+flowers, and they fall.'"
+
+"And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there
+had been a silence afterwards: "how say you?"
+
+"Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that
+you would never, never, forgive."
+
+"Until within these few weeks," he repeated.  "Have you changed your
+opinion of me within these few weeks?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For what reason?"
+
+"I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, to my
+terror, you came in.  As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of
+the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument for a
+bedridden girl.  Your voice and manner were so softened, you showed such
+interest in its selection, you took it away yourself with so much
+tenderness of care and pleasure, that I knew you were a man with a most
+gentle heart.  O Mr. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, if you could have felt the
+refreshing rain of tears that followed for me!"
+
+Was Phoebe playing at that moment, on her distant couch?  He seemed to
+hear her.
+
+"I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get no information.
+As I had heard you say that you were going back by the next train (but
+you did not say where), I resolved to visit the station at about that
+time of day, as often as I could, between my lessons, on the chance of
+seeing you again.  I have been there very often, but saw you no more
+until to-day.  You were meditating as you walked the street, but the calm
+expression of your face emboldened me to send my child to you.  And when
+I saw you bend your head to speak tenderly to her, I prayed to GOD to
+forgive me for having ever brought a sorrow on it.  I now pray to you to
+forgive me, and to forgive my husband.  I was very young, he was young
+too, and in the ignorant hardihood of such a time of life we don't know
+what we do to those who have undergone more discipline.  You generous
+man!  You good man!  So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime
+against you!"--for he would not see her on her knees, and soothed her as
+a kind father might have soothed an erring daughter--"thank you, bless
+you, thank you!"
+
+When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window-curtain
+and looked out a while.  Then, he only said:
+
+"Is Polly asleep?"
+
+"Yes.  As I came in, I met her going away up-stairs, and put her to bed
+myself."
+
+"Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your address on
+this leaf of my pocket-book.  In the evening I will bring her home to
+you--and to her father."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+"Hallo!" cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the door next
+morning when breakfast was ready: "I thought I was fetched last night?"
+
+"So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the day, and
+to take you home in the evening."
+
+"Upon my word!" said Polly.  "You are very cool, ain't you?"
+
+However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added, "I suppose I
+must give you a kiss, though you _are_ cool."  The kiss given and taken,
+they sat down to breakfast in a highly conversational tone.
+
+"Of course, you are going to amuse me?" said Polly.
+
+"Oh, of course," said Barbox Brothers.
+
+In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it
+indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat
+knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into her
+left hand with a business-like slap.  After this gathering of herself
+together, Polly, by that time, a mere heap of dimples, asked in a
+wheedling manner: "What are we going to do, you dear old thing?"
+
+"Why, I was thinking," said Barbox Brothers, "--but are you fond of
+horses, Polly?"
+
+"Ponies, I am," said Polly, "especially when their tails are long.  But
+horses--n--no--too big, you know."
+
+"Well," pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious
+confidence adapted to the importance of the consultation, "I did see
+yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies,
+speckled all over--"
+
+"No, no, NO!" cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the
+charming details.  "Not speckled all over!"
+
+"Speckled all over.  Which ponies jump through hoops--"
+
+"No, no, NO!" cried Polly, as before.  "They never jump through hoops!"
+
+"Yes, they do.  O I assure you, they do.  And eat pie in pinafores--"
+
+"Ponies eating pie in pinafores!" said Polly.  "What a story-teller you
+are, ain't you?"
+
+"Upon my honour.--And fire off guns."
+
+(Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to
+fire-arms.)
+
+"And I was thinking," pursued the exemplary Barbox, "that if you and I
+were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do our
+constitutions good."
+
+"Does that mean, amuse us?" inquired Polly.  "What long words you do use,
+don't you?"
+
+Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied: "That means,
+amuse us.  That is exactly what it means.  There are many other wonders
+besides the ponies, and we shall see them all.  Ladies and gentlemen in
+spangled dresses, and elephants and lions and tigers."
+
+Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose indicating
+some uneasiness of mind.  "They never get out, of course," she remarked
+as a mere truism.
+
+"The elephants and lions and tigers?  O dear no!"
+
+"O dear no!" said Polly.  "And of course nobody's afraid of the ponies
+shooting anybody."
+
+"Not the least in the world."
+
+"No, no, not the least in the world," said Polly.
+
+"I was also thinking," proceeded Barbox, "that if we were to look in at
+the toy-shop, to choose a doll--"
+
+"Not dressed!" cried Polly, with a clap of her hands.  "No, no, NO, not
+dressed!"
+
+"Full dressed.  Together with a house, and all things necessary for
+housekeeping--"
+
+Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into a swoon
+of bliss.  "What a darling you are!" she languidly exclaimed, leaning
+back in her chair.  "Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug you!"
+
+This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the utmost
+rigour of the law.  It being essential to make the purchase of the doll
+its first feature--or that lady would have lost the ponies--the toy-shop
+expedition took precedence.  Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as
+large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some twenty
+more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a spectacle of
+indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed happiness, but the light
+cloud passed.  The lovely specimen oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected,
+and finally abided by, was of Circassian descent, possessing as much
+boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness of mouth,
+and combining a sky-blue silk pelisse with rose-coloured satin trousers,
+and a black velvet hat: which this fair stranger to our northern shores
+would seem to have founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent.
+The name this distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the
+glowing skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka,
+and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox
+coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver teaspoons
+were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch
+exceeded those of her frying-pan.  Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to
+express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the
+ponies _were_ speckled, and brought down nobody when they fired, and the
+savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere smoke--which article, in
+fact, they did produce in large quantities from their insides.  The
+Barbox absorption in the general subject throughout the realisation of
+these delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold
+at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite
+to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and even
+induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due decorum the
+prevailing glorious idea.  To wind up, there came the agreeable fever of
+getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly
+with Polly, to be taken home.  But by that time Polly had become unable
+to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn
+her consciousness into the wonderful Paradise of a child's sleep.
+"Sleep, Polly, sleep," said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on his
+shoulder; "you shall not fall out of this bed, easily, at any rate!"
+
+What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and carefully
+folded into the bosom of Polly's frock, shall not be mentioned.  He said
+nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about it.  They drove to a
+modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and stopped at the forecourt
+of a small house.  "Do not wake the child," said Barbox Brothers, softly,
+to the driver, "I will carry her in as she is."
+
+Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly's mother,
+Polly's bearer passed on with mother and child into a ground-floor room.
+There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man, sorely wasted, who covered
+his eyes with his emaciated hands.
+
+"Tresham," said Barbox, in a kindly voice, "I have brought you back your
+Polly, fast asleep.  Give me your hand, and tell me you are better."
+
+The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head over the
+hand into which it was taken and kissed it.  "Thank you, thank you!  I
+may say that I am well and happy."
+
+"That's brave," said Barbox.  "Tresham, I have a fancy--can you make room
+for me beside you here?"
+
+He sat down on the sofa as he said words, cherishing the plump peachy
+cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.
+
+"I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now, you know,
+and old fellows may take fancies into their heads sometimes), to give up
+Polly, having found her, to no one but you.  Will you take her from me?"
+
+As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two men looked
+steadily at the other.
+
+"She is very dear to you, Tresham?"
+
+"Unutterably dear."
+
+"God bless her!  It is not much, Polly," he continued, turning his eyes
+upon her peaceful face as he apostrophised her, "it is not much, Polly,
+for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far
+better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much--much upon
+his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul--if he could be so wicked
+as to invoke a curse.  He had better have a millstone round his neck, and
+be cast into the deepest sea.  Live and thrive, my pretty baby!"  Here he
+kissed her.  "Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other
+little children, like the Angels who behold The Father's face!"
+
+He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and went
+out.
+
+But he went not to Wales.  No, he never went to Wales.  He went
+straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in upon the
+people at their work, and at their play, here, there, everywhere, and
+where not.  For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and had taken
+thousands of partners into the solitary firm.
+
+He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing before his
+fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he had stood upon
+the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks striking, and, referring
+to his watch, found the evening to have so slipped away, that they were
+striking twelve.  As he put up his watch again, his eyes met those of his
+reflection in the chimney-glass.
+
+"Why it's your birthday already," he said, smiling.  "You are looking
+very well.  I wish you many happy returns of the day."
+
+He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself.  "By Jupiter!" he
+discovered, "it alters the whole case of running away from one's
+birthday!  It's a thing to explain to Phoebe.  Besides, here is quite a
+long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the road with no story.
+I'll go back, instead of going on.  I'll go back by my friend Lamps's Up
+X presently."
+
+He went back to Mugby Junction, and in point of fact he established
+himself at Mugby Junction.  It was the convenient place to live in, for
+brightening Phoebe's life.  It was the convenient place to live in, for
+having her taught music by Beatrice.  It was the convenient place to live
+in, for occasionally borrowing Polly.  It was the convenient place to
+live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable places and
+persons.  So, he became settled there, and, his house standing in an
+elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly
+herself might (not irreverently) have put it:
+
+    There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill,
+    And if he ain't gone, he lives there still.
+
+HERE FOLLOWS THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT WAS SEEN, HEARD, OR OTHERWISE PICKED
+UP, BY THE GENTLEMAN FOR NOWHERE, IN HIS CAREFUL STUDY OF THE JUNCTION.
+
+
+
+
+MAIN LINE
+THE BOY AT MUGBY
+
+
+I am The Boy at Mugby.  That's about what _I_ am.
+
+You don't know what I mean?  What a pity!  But I think you do.  I think
+you must.  Look here.  I am the Boy at what is called The Refreshment
+Room at Mugby Junction, and what's proudest boast is, that it never yet
+refreshed a mortal being.
+
+Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, in the
+height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em while they
+brush the First Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among
+the glasses, bounded on the nor'-west by the beer, stood pretty far to
+the right of a metallic object that's at times the tea-urn and at times
+the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to
+its contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller
+by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and
+lastly exposed sideways to the glare of our Missis's eye--you ask a Boy
+so sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to
+drink; you take particular notice that he'll try to seem not to hear you,
+that he'll appear in a absent manner to survey the Line through a
+transparent medium composed of your head and body, and that he won't
+serve you as long as you can possibly bear it.  That's Me.
+
+What a lark it is!  We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby.
+Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be
+finished off by our Missis.  For some of the young ladies, when they're
+new to the business, come into it mild!  Ah!  Our Missis, she soon takes
+that out of 'em.  Why, I originally come into the business meek myself.
+But Our Missis she soon took that out of _me_.
+
+What a delightful lark it is!  I look upon us Refreshmenters as ockipying
+the only proudly independent footing on the Line.  There's Papers for
+instance--my honourable friend if he will allow me to call him so--him as
+belongs to Smith's bookstall.  Why he no more dares to be up to our
+Refreshmenting games, than he dares to jump atop of a locomotive with her
+steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at
+limited-mail speed.  Papers, he'd get his head punched at every
+compartment, first, second and third, the whole length of a train, if he
+was to ventur to imitate my demeanour.  It's the same with the porters,
+the same with the guards, the same with the ticket clerks, the same the
+whole way up to the secretary, traffic manager, or very chairman.  There
+ain't a one among 'em on the nobly independent footing we are.  Did you
+ever catch one of _them_, when you wanted anything of him, making a
+system of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed of
+your head and body?  I should hope not.
+
+You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction.  It's led to, by
+the door behind the counter which you'll notice usually stands ajar, and
+it's the room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their
+hair.  You should see 'em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining away, as if
+they was anointing themselves for the combat.  When you're telegraphed,
+you should see their noses all a going up with scorn, as if it was a part
+of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery.
+You should hear Our Missis give the word "Here comes the Beast to be
+Fed!" and then you should see 'em indignantly skipping across the Line,
+from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale
+pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass
+covers, and get out the--ha ha ha!--the Sherry--O my eye, my eye!--for
+your Refreshment.
+
+It's only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of
+course I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so
+'olesome, so constitutional, a check upon the public.  There was a
+foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young
+ladies and Our Missis for "a leetel gloss hoff prarndee," and having had
+the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a
+proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own
+country, when Our Missis with her hair almost a coming un-Bandolined with
+rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out
+of his hand, and said: "Put it down!  I won't allow that!"  The foreigner
+turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched out in front of him,
+his hands clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: "Ah!  Is it
+possible this!  That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old
+woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the
+voyagers, but to affront them!  Great Heaven!  How arrives it?  The
+English people.  Or is he then a slave?  Or idiot?"  Another time, a
+merry wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and
+had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain
+exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra Bandolined
+and Line-surveyed through, when, as the bell was ringing and he paid Our
+Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered: "I tell Yew what 'tis,
+ma'arm.  I la'af.  Theer!  I la'af.  I Dew.  I oughter ha' seen most
+things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I
+haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on through
+Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe Old
+World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian Village; but such
+an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid
+and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet!  And if I
+hain't found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew,
+and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, all as
+aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute
+Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the
+innermostest grit!  Wheerfur--Theer!--I la'af!  I Dew, ma'arm.  I la'af!"
+And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all
+the way to his own compartment.
+
+I think it was her standing up agin the Foreigner, as giv' Our Missis the
+idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison betwixt
+Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as
+triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of
+course I mean to say agin, Britannia).  Our young ladies, Miss Whiff,
+Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going; for, as
+they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of
+the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but
+above all of business.  Why then should you tire yourself to prove what
+is aready proved?  Our Missis however (being a teazer at all pints) stood
+out grim obstinate, and got a return pass by South-Eastern Tidal, to go
+right through, if such should be her dispositions, to Marseilles.
+
+Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove.  He
+looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is sometimes when
+we are very hard put to it let in behind the counter with a corkscrew;
+but never when it can be helped, his demeanour towards the public being
+disgusting servile.  How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as
+to marry him, I don't know; but I suppose _he_ does, and I should think
+he wished he didn't, for he leads a awful life.  Mrs. Sniff couldn't be
+much harder with him if he was public.  Similarly, Miss Whiff and Miss
+Piff; taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff about when he is
+let in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things out of his hands when in
+his servility he is a going to let the public have 'em, and they snap him
+up when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a going to answer a
+public question, and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the
+mustard does which he all day long lays on to the sawdust.  (But it ain't
+strong.)  Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness to reach across to get
+the milk-pot to hand over for a baby, I see Our Missis in her rage catch
+him by both his shoulders and spin him out into the Bandolining Room.
+
+But Mrs. Sniff.  How different!  She's the one!  She's the one as you'll
+notice to be always looking another way from you, when you look at her.
+She's the one with the small waist buckled in tight in front, and with
+the lace cuffs at her wrists, which she puts on the edge of the counter
+before her, and stands a smoothing while the public foams.  This
+smoothing the cuffs and looking another way while the public foams, is
+the last accomplishment taught to the young ladies as come to Mugby to be
+finished by Our Missis; and it's always taught by Mrs. Sniff.
+
+When Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs. Sniff was left in
+charge.  She did hold the public in check most beautiful!  In all my
+time, I never see half so many cups of tea given without milk to people
+as wanted it with, nor half so many cups of tea with milk given to people
+as wanted it without.  When foaming ensued, Mrs. Sniff would say: "Then
+you'd better settle it among yourselves, and change with one another."
+It was a most highly delicious lark.  I enjoyed the Refreshmenting
+business more than ever, and was so glad I had took to it when young.
+
+Our Missis returned.  It got circulated among the young ladies, and it as
+it might be penetrated to me through the crevices of the Bandolining
+Room, that she had Orrors to reveal, if revelations so contemptible could
+be dignified with the name.  Agitation become awakened.  Excitement was
+up in the stirrups.  Expectation stood a tiptoe.  At length it was put
+forth that on our slackest evening in the week, and at our slackest time
+of that evening betwixt trains, Our Missis would give her views of
+foreign Refreshmenting, in the Bandolining Room.
+
+It was arranged tasteful for the purpose.  The Bandolining table and
+glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair was elevated on a packing-case for
+Our Missis's ockypation, a table and a tumbler of water (no sherry in it,
+thankee) was placed beside it.  Two of the pupils, the season being
+autumn, and hollyhocks and daliahs being in, ornamented the wall with
+three devices in those flowers.  On one might be read, "MAY ALBION NEVER
+LEARN;" on another, "KEEP THE PUBLIC DOWN;" on another, "OUR
+REFRESHMENTING CHARTER."  The whole had a beautiful appearance, with
+which the beauty of the sentiments corresponded.
+
+On Our Missis's brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal
+platform.  (Not that that was anythink new.)  Miss Whiff and Miss Piff
+sat at her feet.  Three chairs from the Waiting Room might have been
+perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the pupils was
+accommodated.  Behind them, a very close observer might have discerned a
+Boy.  Myself.
+
+"Where," said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, "is Sniff?"
+
+"I thought it better," answered Mrs. Sniff, "that he should not be let to
+come in.  He is such an Ass."
+
+"No doubt," assented Our Missis.  "But for that reason is it not
+desirable to improve his mind?"
+
+"O!  Nothing will ever improve _him_," said Mrs. Sniff.
+
+"However," pursued Our Missis, "call him in, Ezekiel."
+
+I called him in.  The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with
+disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his
+corkscrew with him.  He pleaded "the force of habit."
+
+"The force!" said Mrs. Sniff.  "Don't let us have you talking about
+force, for Gracious sake.  There!  Do stand still where you are, with
+your back against the wall."
+
+He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which
+he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no
+meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his
+head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and
+measure his heighth for the Army.
+
+"I should not enter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting
+disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will
+cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you
+wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the
+constitutional motto which I see before me;" it was behind her, but the
+words sounded better so; "'May Albion never learn!'"
+
+Here the pupils as had made the motto, admired it, and cried, "Hear!
+Hear!  Hear!"  Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got
+himself frowned down by every brow.
+
+"The baseness of the French," pursued Our Missis, "as displayed in the
+fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses,
+anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Buonaparte."
+
+Miss Whiff, Miss Piff and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to saying,
+"We thought as much!"
+
+Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my droring mine along with
+theirs, I drored another, to aggravate 'em.
+
+"Shall I be believed," says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, "when I tell
+you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous shore--"
+
+Here Sniff, either busting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a low
+voice: "Feet.  Plural, you know."
+
+The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to
+his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so
+grovelling.  In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the
+turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, Our Missis went on:
+
+"Shall I be believed when I tell you that no sooner had I landed," this
+word with a killing look at Sniff, "on that treacherous shore, than I was
+ushered into a Refreshment Room where there were, I do not exaggerate,
+actually eatable things to eat?"
+
+A groan burst from the ladies.  I not only did myself the honour of
+jining, but also of lengthening it out.
+
+"Where there were," Our Missis added, "not only eatable things to eat,
+but also drinkable things to drink?"
+
+A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz.  Miss Piff, trembling with
+indignation, called out: "Name!"
+
+"I _will_ name," said Our Missis.  "There was roast fowls, hot and cold;
+there was smoking roast veal surrounded with browned potatoes; there was
+hot soup with (again I ask shall I be credited?) nothing bitter in it,
+and no flour to choke off the consumer; there was a variety of cold
+dishes set off with jelly; there was salad; there was--mark me!--_fresh_
+pastry, and that of a light construction; there was a luscious show of
+fruit.  There was bottles and decanters of sound small wine, of every
+size and adapted to every pocket; the same odious statement will apply to
+brandy; and these were set out upon the counter so that all could help
+themselves."
+
+Our Missis's lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though scarcely less
+convulsed than she were, got up and held the tumbler to them.
+
+"This," proceeds Our Missis, "was my first unconstitutional experience.
+Well would it have been, if it had been my last and worst.  But no.  As I
+proceeded further into that enslaved and ignorant land, its aspect became
+more hideous.  I need not explain to this assembly, the ingredients and
+formation of the British Refreshment sangwich?"
+
+Universal laughter--except from Sniff, who, as sangwich-cutter, shook his
+head in a state of the utmost dejection as he stood with it agin the
+wall.
+
+"Well!" said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils.  "Take a fresh crisp long
+crusty penny loaf made of the whitest and best flower.  Cut it longwise
+through the middle.  Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice of ham.  Tie
+a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole to bind it
+together.  Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white paper by which to
+hold it.  And the universal French Refreshment sangwich busts on your
+disgusted vision."
+
+A cry of "Shame!" from all--except Sniff, which rubbed his stomach with a
+soothing hand.
+
+"I need not," said Our Missis, "explain to this assembly, the usual
+formation and fitting of the British Refreshment Room?"
+
+No, no, and laughter.  Sniff agin shaking his head in low spirits agin
+the wall.
+
+"Well," said Our Missis, "what would you say to a general decoration of
+everythink, to hangings (sometimes elegant), to easy velvet furniture, to
+abundance of little tables, to abundance of little seats, to brisk bright
+waiters, to great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness and
+tastefulness positively addressing the public and making the Beast
+thinking itself worth the pains?"
+
+Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies.  Mrs. Sniff looking as
+if she wanted somebody to hold her, and everybody else looking as if
+they'd rayther not.
+
+"Three times," said our Missis, working herself into a truly
+terrimenjious state, "three times did I see these shamful things, only
+between the coast and Paris, and not counting either: at Hazebroucke, at
+Arras, at Amiens.  But worse remains.  Tell me, what would you call a
+person who should propose in England that there should be kept, say at
+our own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, each holding an assorted
+cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a certain fixed price, and each
+within a passenger's power to take away, to empty in the carriage at
+perfect leisure, and to return at another station fifty or a hundred
+miles further on?"
+
+There was disagreement what such a person should be called.  Whether
+revolutionist, atheist, Bright (_I_ said him), or Un-English.  Miss Piff
+screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: "A malignant maniac!"
+
+"I adopt," says Our Missis, "the brand set upon such a person by the
+righteous indignation of my friend Miss Piff.  A malignant maniac.  Know
+then, that that malignant maniac has sprung from the congenial soil of
+France, and that his malignant madness was in unchecked action on this
+same part of my journey."
+
+I noticed that Sniff was a rubbing his hands, and that Mrs. Sniff had got
+her eye upon him.  But I did not take more particular notice, owing to
+the excited state in which the young ladies was, and to feeling myself
+called upon to keep it up with a howl.
+
+"On my experience south of Paris," said Our Missis, in a deep tone, "I
+will not expatiate.  Too loathsome were the task!  But fancy this.  Fancy
+a guard coming round, with the train at full speed, to inquire how many
+for dinner.  Fancy his telegraphing forward, the number of diners.  Fancy
+every one expected, and the table elegantly laid for the complete party.
+Fancy a charming dinner, in a charming room, and the head-cook, concerned
+for the honour of every dish, superintending in his clean white jacket
+and cap.  Fancy the Beast travelling six hundred miles on end, very fast,
+and with great punctuality, yet being taught to expect all this to be
+done for it!"
+
+A spirited chorus of "The Beast!"
+
+I noticed that Sniff was agin a rubbing his stomach with a soothing hand,
+and that he had drored up one leg.  But agin I didn't take particular
+notice, looking on myself as called upon to stimilate public feeling.  It
+being a lark besides.
+
+"Putting everything together," said Our Missis, "French Refreshmenting
+comes to this, and O it comes to a nice total!  First: eatable things to
+eat, and drinkable things to drink."
+
+A groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me.
+
+"Second: convenience, and even elegance."
+
+Another groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me.
+
+"Third: moderate charges."
+
+This time, a groan from me, kep' up by the young ladies.
+
+"Fourth:--and here," says Our Missis, "I claim your angriest
+sympathy--attention, common civility, nay, even politeness!"
+
+Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together.
+
+"And I cannot in conclusion," says Our Missis, with her spitefullest
+sneer, "give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what
+I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn't bear our
+constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a
+single month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and put
+another system in our places, as soon as look at us; perhaps sooner, for
+I do not believe they have the good taste to care to look at us twice."
+
+The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise.  Sniff, bore away by his
+servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher
+relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head.
+It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep' her eye upon him like
+the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim.  Our Missis followed them
+both out, and cries was heard in the sawdust department.
+
+You come into the Down Refreshment Room, at the Junction, making believe
+you don't know me, and I'll pint you out with my right thumb over my
+shoulder which is Our Missis, and which is Miss Whiff; and which is Miss
+Piff; and which is Mrs. Sniff.  But you won't get a chance to see Sniff,
+because he disappeared that night.  Whether he perished, tore to pieces,
+I cannot say; but his corkscrew alone remains, to bear witness to the
+servility of his disposition.
+
+
+
+
+NO. 1 BRANCH LINE
+THE SIGNAL-MAN
+
+
+"Halloa!  Below there!"
+
+When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of
+his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole.  One would
+have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not
+have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but, instead of looking up
+to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he
+turned himself about and looked down the Line.  There was something
+remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said, for
+my life, what.  But, I know it was remarkable enough to attract my
+notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in
+the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of
+an angry sunset that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him
+at all.
+
+"Halloa!  Below!"
+
+From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising
+his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
+
+"Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?"
+
+He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without
+pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question.  Just then,
+there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into
+a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back,
+as though it had force to draw me down.  When such vapour as rose to my
+height from this rapid train, had passed me and was skimming away over
+the landscape, I looked down again and saw him re-furling the flag he had
+shown while the train went by.
+
+I repeated my inquiry.  After a pause, during which he seemed to regard
+me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a
+point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant.  I called
+down to him, "All right!" and made for that point.  There, by dint of
+looking closely about me, I found a rough zig-zag descending path notched
+out: which I followed.
+
+The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate.  It was made
+through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.  For
+these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a
+singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out
+the path.
+
+When I came down low enough upon the zig-zag descent, to see him again, I
+saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train
+had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear.
+He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right
+hand crossed over his breast.  His attitude was one of such expectation
+and watchfulness, that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.
+
+I resumed my downward way, and, stepping out upon the level of the
+railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man,
+with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.  His post was in as solitary
+and dismal a place as ever I saw.  On either side, a dripping-wet wall of
+jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one
+way, only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter
+perspective in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light,
+and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive
+architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air.  So
+little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy
+deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck
+chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.
+
+Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him.  Not
+even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and
+lifted his hand.
+
+This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
+attention when I looked down from up yonder.  A visitor was a rarity, I
+should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped?  In me, he merely saw a
+man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who,
+being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great
+works.  To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the
+terms I used, for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
+conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
+
+He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel's
+mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and
+then looked at me.
+
+That light was part of his charge?  Was it not?
+
+He answered in a low voice: "Don't you know it is?"
+
+The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and
+the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.  I have speculated
+since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
+
+In my turn, I stepped back.  But in making the action, I detected in his
+eyes some latent fear of me.  This put the monstrous thought to flight.
+
+"You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, "as if you had a dread of me."
+
+"I was doubtful," he returned, "whether I had seen you before."
+
+"Where?"
+
+He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
+
+"There?" I said.
+
+Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), "Yes."
+
+"My good fellow, what should I do there?  However, be that as it may, I
+never was there, you may swear."
+
+"I think I may," he rejoined.  "Yes.  I am sure I may."
+
+His manner cleared, like my own.  He replied to my remarks with
+readiness, and in well-chosen words.  Had he much to do there?  Yes; that
+was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and
+watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work--manual
+labour--he had next to none.  To change that signal, to trim those
+lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do
+under that head.  Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I
+seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life
+had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it.  He had
+taught himself a language down here--if only to know it by sight, and to
+have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called
+learning it.  He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a
+little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at
+figures.  Was it necessary for him when on duty, always to remain in that
+channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from
+between those high stone walls?  Why, that depended upon times and
+circumstances.  Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line
+than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day
+and night.  In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a
+little above these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be
+called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with
+redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
+
+He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official
+book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument
+with its dial face and needles, and the little bell of which he had
+spoken.  On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been
+well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence), perhaps
+educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight
+incongruity in such-wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies
+of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force,
+even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was
+so, more or less, in any great railway staff.  He had been, when young
+(if I could believe it, sitting in that hut; he scarcely could), a
+student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run
+wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again.  He
+had no complaint to offer about that.  He had made his bed, and he lay
+upon it.  It was far too late to make another.
+
+All that I have here condensed, he said in a quiet manner, with his grave
+dark regards divided between me and the fire.  He threw in the word
+"Sir," from time to time, and especially when he referred to his youth:
+as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but
+what I found him.  He was several times interrupted by the little bell,
+and had to read off messages, and send replies.  Once, he had to stand
+without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some
+verbal communication to the driver.  In the discharge of his duties I
+observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his
+discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was
+done.
+
+In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to
+be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was
+speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face
+towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut
+(which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out
+towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel.  On both of those
+occasions, he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him
+which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far
+asunder.
+
+Said I when I rose to leave him: "You almost make me think that I have
+met with a contented man."
+
+(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on).
+
+"I believe I used to be so," he rejoined, in the low voice in which he
+had first spoken; "but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled."
+
+He would have recalled the words if he could.  He had said them, however,
+and I took them up quickly.
+
+"With what?  What is your trouble?"
+
+"It is very difficult to impart, sir.  It is very, very, difficult to
+speak of.  If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you."
+
+"But I expressly intend to make you another visit.  Say, when shall it
+be?"
+
+"I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-morrow
+night, sir."
+
+"I will come at eleven."
+
+He thanked me, and went out at the door with me.  "I'll show my white
+light, sir," he said, in his peculiar low voice, "till you have found the
+way up.  When you have found it, don't call out!  And when you are at the
+top, don't call out!"
+
+His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no
+more than "Very well."
+
+"And when you come down to-morrow night, don't call out!  Let me ask you
+a parting question.  What made you cry 'Halloa!  Below there!' to-night?"
+
+"Heaven knows," said I.  "I cried something to that effect--"
+
+"Not to that effect, sir.  Those were the very words.  I know them well."
+
+"Admit those were the very words.  I said them, no doubt, because I saw
+you below."
+
+"For no other reason?"
+
+"What other reason could I possibly have!"
+
+"You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural
+way?"
+
+"No."
+
+He wished me good night, and held up his light.  I walked by the side of
+the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train
+coming behind me), until I found the path.  It was easier to mount than
+to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.
+
+Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the
+zig-zag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven.  He was
+waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on.  "I have not
+called out," I said, when we came close together; "may I speak now?"  "By
+all means, sir."  "Good night then, and here's my hand."  "Good night,
+sir, and here's mine."  With that, we walked side by side to his box,
+entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire.
+
+"I have made up my mind, sir," he began, bending forward as soon as we
+were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, "that
+you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me.  I took you for some
+one else yesterday evening.  That troubles me."
+
+"That mistake?"
+
+"No.  That some one else."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Like me?"
+
+"I don't know.  I never saw the face.  The left arm is across the face,
+and the right arm is waved.  Violently waved.  This way."
+
+I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm
+gesticulating with the utmost passion and vehemence: "For God's sake
+clear the way!"
+
+"One moonlight night," said the man, "I was sitting here, when I heard a
+voice cry 'Halloa!  Below there!' I started up, looked from that door,
+and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the tunnel,
+waving as I just now showed you.  The voice seemed hoarse with shouting,
+and it cried, 'Look out!  Look out!' And then again 'Halloa!  Below
+there!  Look out!' I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards
+the figure, calling, 'What's wrong?  What has happened?  Where?'  It
+stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel.  I advanced so close upon
+it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes.  I ran
+right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away,
+when it was gone."
+
+"Into the tunnel," said I.
+
+"No.  I ran on, into the tunnel, five hundred yards.  I stopped and held
+my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and
+saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the
+arch.  I ran out again, faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal
+abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light
+with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop
+of it, and I came down again, and ran back here.  I telegraphed both
+ways: 'An alarm has been given.  Is anything wrong?'  The answer came
+back, both ways: 'All well.'"
+
+Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I
+showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of
+sight, and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate
+nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have
+often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature
+of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon
+themselves.  "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a
+moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to
+the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires!"
+
+That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a
+while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires, he who
+so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching.  But he
+would beg to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm:
+
+"Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this
+Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought
+along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood."
+
+A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.  It
+was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence,
+calculated deeply to impress his mind.  But, it was unquestionable that
+remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken
+into account in dealing with such a subject.  Though to be sure I must
+admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the
+objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for
+coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.
+
+He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
+
+"This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his
+shoulder with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago.  Six or seven months
+passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one
+morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at that door, looked
+towards the red light, and saw the spectre again."  He stopped, with a
+fixed look at me.
+
+"Did it cry out?"
+
+"No.  It was silent."
+
+"Did it wave its arm?"
+
+"No.  It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before
+the face.  Like this."
+
+Once more, I followed his action with my eyes.  It was an action of
+mourning.  I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
+
+"Did you go up to it?"
+
+"I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it
+had turned me faint.  When I went to the door again, daylight was above
+me, and the ghost was gone."
+
+"But nothing followed?  Nothing came of this?"
+
+He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a
+ghastly nod each time:
+
+"That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a
+carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and
+heads, and something waved.  I saw it, just in time to signal the driver,
+Stop!  He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here
+a hundred and fifty yards or more.  I ran after it, and, as I went along,
+heard terrible screams and cries.  A beautiful young lady had died
+instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and
+laid down on this floor between us."
+
+Involuntarily, I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at
+which he pointed, to himself.
+
+"True, sir.  True.  Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you."
+
+I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very
+dry.  The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting
+wail.
+
+He resumed.  "Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled.
+The spectre came back, a week ago.  Ever since, it has been there, now
+and again, by fits and starts."
+
+"At the light?"
+
+"At the Danger-light."
+
+"What does it seem to do?"
+
+He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
+former gesticulation of "For God's sake clear the way!"
+
+Then, he went on.  "I have no peace or rest for it.  It calls to me, for
+many minutes together, in an agonised manner, 'Below there!  Look out!
+Look out!'  It stands waving to me.  It rings my little bell--"
+
+I caught at that.  "Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was
+here, and you went to the door?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"Why, see," said I, "how your imagination misleads you.  My eyes were on
+the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it
+did NOT ring at those times.  No, nor at any other time, except when it
+was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station
+communicating with you."
+
+He shook his head.  "I have never made a mistake as to that, yet, sir.  I
+have never confused the spectre's ring with the man's.  The ghost's ring
+is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and
+I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye.  I don't wonder that
+you failed to hear it.  But _I_ heard it."
+
+"And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?"
+
+"It WAS there."
+
+"Both times?"
+
+He repeated firmly: "Both times."
+
+"Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?"
+
+He bit his under-lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose.  I
+opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway.
+There, was the Danger-light.  There, was the dismal mouth of the tunnel.
+There, were the high wet stone walls of the cutting.  There, were the
+stars above them.
+
+"Do you see it?" I asked him, taking particular note of his face.  His
+eyes were prominent and strained; but not very much more so, perhaps,
+than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same
+spot.
+
+"No," he answered.  "It is not there."
+
+"Agreed," said I.
+
+We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats.  I was thinking
+how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he
+took up the conversation in such a matter of course way, so assuming that
+there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself
+placed in the weakest of positions.
+
+"By this time you will fully understand, sir," he said, "that what
+troubles me so dreadfully, is the question, What does the spectre mean?"
+
+I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
+
+"What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the
+fire, and only by times turning them on me.  "What is the danger?  Where
+is the danger?  There is danger overhanging, somewhere on the Line.  Some
+dreadful calamity will happen.  It is not to be doubted this third time,
+after what has gone before.  But surely this is a cruel haunting of _me_.
+What can _I_ do!"
+
+He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
+forehead.
+
+"If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no
+reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands.  "I should get
+into trouble, and do no good.  They would think I was mad.  This is the
+way it would work:--Message: 'Danger!  Take care!'  Answer: 'What danger?
+Where?'  Message: 'Don't know.  But for God's sake take care!'  They
+would displace me.  What else could they do?"
+
+His pain of mind was most pitiable to see.  It was the mental torture of
+a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible
+responsibility involving life.
+
+"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting his
+dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and
+across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, "why not tell me
+where that accident was to happen--if it must happen?  Why not tell me
+how it could be averted--if it could have been averted?  When on its
+second coming it hid its face, why not tell me instead: 'She is going to
+die.  Let them keep her at home'?  If it came, on those two occasions,
+only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the
+third, why not warn me plainly now?  And I, Lord help me!  A mere poor
+signal-man on this solitary station!  Why not go to somebody with credit
+to be believed, and power to act!"
+
+When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as well
+as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was, to compose
+his mind.  Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality
+between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his
+duty, must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he
+understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding
+Appearances.  In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt
+to reason him out of his conviction.  He became calm; the occupations
+incidental to his post as the night advanced, began to make larger
+demands on his attention; and I left him at two in the morning.  I had
+offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.
+
+That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
+pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept
+but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal.  Nor,
+did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl.  I see no
+reason to conceal that, either.
+
+But, what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to
+act, having become the recipient of this disclosure?  I had proved the
+man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long
+might he remain so, in his state of mind?  Though in a subordinate
+position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for
+instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to
+execute it with precision?
+
+Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in
+my communicating what he had told me, to his superiors in the Company,
+without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to
+him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping
+his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could
+hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion.  A change in his time of
+duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off
+an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset.  I had
+appointed to return accordingly.
+
+Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it.
+The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the
+top of the deep cutting.  I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to
+myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time
+to go to my signal-man's box.
+
+Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
+looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him.  I cannot
+describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the
+tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his
+eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
+
+The nameless horror that oppressed me, passed in a moment, for in a
+moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that
+there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance, to
+whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made.  The Danger-light
+was not yet lighted.  Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new
+to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin.  It looked no
+bigger than a bed.
+
+With an irresistible sense that something was wrong--with a flashing
+self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man
+there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he
+did--I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.
+
+"What is the matter?" I asked the men.
+
+"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."
+
+"Not the man belonging to that box?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Not the man I know?"
+
+"You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who spoke
+for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head and raising an end of
+the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."
+
+"O! how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from one
+to another as the hut closed in again.
+
+"He was cut down by an engine, sir.  No man in England knew his work
+better.  But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail.  It was just at
+broad day.  He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.  As
+the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut
+him down.  That man drove her, and was showing how it happened.  Show the
+gentleman, Tom."
+
+The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at
+the mouth of the tunnel:
+
+"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at the
+end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass.  There was no time to
+check speed, and I knew him to be very careful.  As he didn't seem to
+take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon
+him, and called to him as loud as I could call."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I said, Below there!  Look out!  Look out!  For God's sake clear the
+way!"
+
+I started.
+
+"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir.  I never left off calling to him.  I
+put this arm before my eyes, not to see, and I waved this arm to the
+last; but it was no use."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
+circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the
+coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the
+words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting
+him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had attached, and that
+only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.
+
+
+
+
+NO. 2 BRANCH LINE
+THE ENGINE-DRIVER
+
+
+"Altogether?  Well.  Altogether, since 1841, I've killed seven men and
+boys.  It ain't many in all those years."
+
+These startling words he uttered in a serious tone as he leaned against
+the Station-wall.  He was a thick-set, ruddy-faced man, with coal-black
+eyes, the whites of which were not white, but a brownish-yellow, and
+apparently scarred and seamed, as if they had been operated upon.  They
+were eyes that had worked hard in looking through wind and weather.  He
+was dressed in a short black pea-jacket and grimy white canvas trousers,
+and wore on his head a flat black cap.  There was no sign of levity in
+his face.  His look was serious even to sadness, and there was an air of
+responsibility about his whole bearing which assured me that he spoke in
+earnest.
+
+"Yes, sir, I have been for five-and-twenty years a Locomotive
+Engine-driver; and in all that time, I've only killed seven men and boys.
+There's not many of my mates as can say as much for themselves.
+Steadiness, sir--steadiness and keeping your eyes open, is what does it.
+When I say seven men and boys, I mean my mates--stokers, porters, and so
+forth.  I don't count passengers."
+
+How did he become an engine-driver?
+
+"My father," he said, "was a wheelwright in a small way, and lived in a
+little cottage by the side of the railway which runs betwixt Leeds and
+Selby.  It was the second railway laid down in the kingdom, the second
+after the Liverpool and Manchester, where Mr. Huskisson was killed, as
+you may have heard on, sir.  When the trains rushed by, we young 'uns
+used to run out to look at 'em, and hooray.  I noticed the driver turning
+handles, and making it go, and I thought to myself it would be a fine
+thing to be a engine-driver, and have the control of a wonderful machine
+like that.  Before the railway, the driver of the mail-coach was the
+biggest man I knew.  I thought I should like to be the driver of a coach.
+We had a picture in our cottage of George the Third in a red coat.  I
+always mixed up the driver of the mail-coach--who had a red coat,
+too--with the king, only he had a low-crowned broad-brimmed hat, which
+the king hadn't.  In my idea, the king couldn't be a greater man than the
+driver of the mail-coach.  I had always a fancy to be a head man of some
+kind.  When I went to Leeds once, and saw a man conducting a orchestra, I
+thought I should like to be the conductor of a orchestra.  When I went
+home I made myself a baton, and went about the fields conducting a
+orchestra.  It wasn't there, of course, but I pretended it was.  At
+another time, a man with a whip and a speaking-trumpet, on the stage
+outside a show, took my fancy, and I thought I should like to be him.
+But when the train came, the engine-driver put them all in the shade, and
+I was resolved to be a engine-driver.  It wasn't long before I had to do
+something to earn my own living, though I was only a young 'un.  My
+father died suddenly--he was killed by thunder and lightning while
+standing under a tree out of the rain--and mother couldn't keep us all.
+The day after my father's burial I walked down to the station, and said I
+wanted to be a engine-driver.  The station-master laughed a bit, said I
+was for beginning early, but that I was not quite big enough yet.  He
+gave me a penny, and told me to go home and grow, and come again in ten
+years' time.  I didn't dream of danger then.  If I couldn't be a
+engine-driver, I was determined to have something to do about a engine;
+so, as I could get nothing else, I went on board a Humber steamer, and
+broke up coals for the stoker.  That was how I began.  From that, I
+became a stoker, first on board a boat, and then on a locomotive.  Then,
+after two years' service, I became a driver on the very Line which passed
+our cottage.  My mother and my brothers and sisters came out to look at
+me, the first day I drove.  I was watching for them and they was watching
+for me, and they waved their hands and hoora'd, and I waved my hand to
+them.  I had the steam well up, and was going at a rattling pace, and
+rare proud I was that minute.  Never was so proud in my life!
+
+"When a man has a liking for a thing it's as good as being clever.  In a
+very short time I became one of the best drivers on the Line.  That was
+allowed.  I took a pride in it, you see, and liked it.  No, I didn't know
+much about the engine scientifically, as you call it; but I could put her
+to rights if anything went out of gear--that is to say, if there was
+nothing broken--but I couldn't have explained how the steam worked
+inside.  Starting a engine, it's just like drawing a drop of gin.  You
+turn a handle and off she goes; then you turn the handle the other way,
+put on the brakes, and you stop her.  There's not much more in it, so
+far.  It's no good being scientific and knowing the principle of the
+engine inside; no good at all.  Fitters, who know all the ins and outs of
+the engine, make the worst drivers.  That's well known.  They know too
+much.  It's just as I've heard of a man with regard to _his_ inside: if
+he knew what a complicated machine it is, he would never eat, or drink,
+or dance, or run, or do anything, for fear of busting something.  So it
+is with fitters.  But us as are not troubled with such thoughts, we go
+ahead.
+
+"But starting a engine's one thing and driving of her is another.  Any
+one, a child a'most, can turn on the steam and turn it off again; but it
+ain't every one that can keep a engine well on the road, no more than it
+ain't every one who can ride a horse properly.  It is much the same
+thing.  If you gallop a horse right off for a mile or two, you take the
+wind out of him, and for the next mile or two you must let him trot or
+walk.  So it is with a engine.  If you put on too much steam, to get over
+the ground at the start, you exhaust the boiler, and then you'll have to
+crawl along till your fresh water boils up.  The great thing in driving,
+is, to go steady, never to let your water get too low, nor your fire too
+low.  It's the same with a kettle.  If you fill it up when it's about
+half empty, it soon comes to the boil again; but if you don't fill it up
+until the water's nearly out, it's a long time in coming to the boil
+again.  Another thing; you should never make spurts, unless you are
+detained and lose time.  You should go up a incline and down a incline at
+the same pace.  Sometimes a driver will waste his steam, and when he
+comes to a hill he has scarcely enough to drag him up.  When you're in a
+train that goes by fits and starts, you may be sure that there is a bad
+driver on the engine.  That kind of driving frightens passengers
+dreadful.  When the train, after rattling along, suddenly slackens speed
+when it ain't near a station, it may be in the middle of a tunnel, the
+passengers think there is danger.  But generally it's because the driver
+has exhausted his steam.
+
+"I drove the Brighton express, four or five years before I come here, and
+the annuals--that is, the passengers who had annual tickets--always said
+they knew when I was on the engine, because they wasn't jerked.
+Gentlemen used to say as they came on to the platform, 'Who drives
+to-day--Jim Martin?'  And when the guard told them yes, they said 'All
+right,' and took their seats quite comfortable.  But the driver never
+gets so much as a shilling; the guard comes in for all that, and he does
+nothing much.  Few ever think of the driver.  I dare say they think the
+train goes along of itself; yet if we didn't keep a sharp look-out, know
+our duty, and do it, they might all go smash at any moment.  I used to
+make that journey to Brighton in fifty-two minutes.  The papers said
+forty-nine minutes, but that was coming it a little too strong.  I had to
+watch signals all the way, one every two miles, so that me and my stoker
+were on the stretch all the time, doing two things at once--attending to
+the engine and looking out.  I've driven on this Line, eighty-one miles
+and three-quarters, in eighty-six minutes.  There's no danger in speed if
+you have a good road, a good engine, and not too many coaches behind.
+No, we don't call them carriages, we call them 'coaches.'
+
+"Yes; oscillation means danger.  If you're ever in a coach that
+oscillates much, tell of it at the first station and get it coupled up
+closer.  Coaches when they're too loose are apt to jump, or swing off the
+rails; and it's quite as dangerous when they're coupled up too close.
+There ought to be just space enough for the buffers to work easy.
+Passengers are frightened in tunnels, but there's less danger, _now_, in
+tunnels than anywhere else.  We never enter a tunnel unless it's
+signalled Clear.
+
+"A train can be stopped wonderful quick, even when running express, if
+the guards act with the driver and clap on all the brakes promptly.  Much
+depends upon the guards.  One brake behind, is as good as two in front.
+The engine, you see, loses weight as she burns her coals and consumes her
+water, but the coaches behind don't alter.  We have a good deal of
+trouble with young guards.  In their anxiety to perform their duties,
+they put on the brakes too soon, so that sometimes we can scarcely drag
+the train into the station; when they grow older at it they are not so
+anxious, and don't put them on soon enough.  It's no use to say, when an
+accident happens, that they did not put on the brakes in time; they swear
+they did, and you can't prove that they didn't.
+
+"Do I think that the tapping of the wheels with a hammer is a mere
+ceremony?  Well, I don't know exactly; I should not like to say.  It's
+not often that the chaps find anything wrong.  They may sometimes be half
+asleep when a train comes into a station in the middle of the night.  You
+would be yourself.  They ought to tap the axle-box, but they don't.
+
+"Many accidents take place that never get into the papers; many trains,
+full of passengers, escape being dashed to pieces by next door to a
+miracle.  Nobody knows anything about it but the driver and the stoker.
+I remember once, when I was driving on the Eastern Counties.  Going round
+a curve, I suddenly saw a train coming along on the same line of rails.
+I clapped on the brake, but it was too late, I thought.  Seeing the
+engine almost close upon us, I cried to my stoker to jump.  He jumped off
+the engine, almost before the words were out of my mouth.  I was just
+taking my hand off the lever to follow, when the coming train turned off
+on the points, and the next instant the hind coach passed my engine by a
+shave.  It was the nearest touch I ever saw.  My stoker was killed.  In
+another half second I should have jumped off and been killed too.  What
+would have become of the train without us is more than I can tell you.
+
+"There are heaps of people run over, that no one ever hears about.  One
+dark night in the Black Country, me and my mate felt something wet and
+warm splash in our faces.  'That didn't come from the engine, Bill,' I
+said.  'No,' he said; 'it's something thick, Jim.'  It was blood.  That's
+what it was.  We heard afterwards that a collier had been run over.  When
+we kill any of our own chaps, we say as little about it as possible.
+It's generally--mostly always--their own fault.  No, we never think of
+danger ourselves.  We're used to it, you see.  But we're not reckless.  I
+don't believe there's any body of men that takes more pride in their work
+than engine-drivers do.  We are as proud and as fond of our engines as if
+they were living things; as proud of them as a huntsman or a jockey is of
+his horse.  And a engine has almost as many ways as a horse; she's a
+kicker, a plunger, a roarer, or what not, in her way.  Put a stranger on
+to my engine, and he wouldn't know what to do with her.  Yes; there's
+wonderful improvements in engines since the last great Exhibition.  Some
+of them take up their water without stopping.  That's a wonderful
+invention, and yet as simple as A B C.  There are water-troughs at
+certain places, lying between the rails.  By moving a lever you let down
+the mouth of a scoop into the water, and as you rush along the water is
+forced into the tank, at the rate of three thousand gallons a minute.
+
+"A engine-driver's chief anxiety is to keep time; that's what he thinks
+most of.  When I was driving the Brighton express, I always felt like as
+if I was riding a race against time.  I had no fear of the pace; what I
+feared was losing way, and not getting in to the minute.  We have to give
+in an account of our time when we arrive.  The company provides us with
+watches, and we go by them.  Before starting on a journey, we pass
+through a room to be inspected.  That's to see if we are sober.  But they
+don't say nothing to us, and a man who was a little gone might pass easy.
+I've known a stoker that had passed the inspection, come on to the engine
+as drunk as a fly, flop down among the coals, and sleep there like a log
+for the whole run.  I had to be my own stoker then.  If you ask me if
+engine-drivers are drinking men, I must answer you that they are pretty
+well.  It's trying work; one half of you cold as ice; t'other half hot as
+fire; wet one minute, dry the next.  If ever a man had an excuse for
+drinking, that man's a engine-driver.  And yet I don't know if ever a
+driver goes upon his engine drunk.  If he was to, the wind would soon
+sober him.
+
+"I believe engine-drivers, as a body, are the healthiest fellows alive;
+but they don't live long.  The cause of that, I believe to be the cold
+food, and the shaking.  By the cold food, I mean that a engine-driver
+never gets his meals comfortable.  He's never at home to his dinner.
+When he starts away the first thing in the morning, he takes a bit of
+cold meat and a piece of bread with him for his dinner; and generally he
+has to eat it in the shed, for he mustn't leave his engine.  You can
+understand how the jolting and shaking knocks a man up, after a bit.  The
+insurance companies won't take us at ordinary rates.  We're obliged to be
+Foresters, or Old Friends, or that sort of thing, where they ain't so
+particular.  The wages of a engine-driver average about eight shillings a
+day, but if he's a good schemer with his coals--yes, I mean if he
+economises his coals--he's allowed so much more.  Some will make from
+five to ten shillings a week that way.  I don't complain of the wages
+particular; but it's hard lines for such as us, to have to pay
+income-tax.  The company gives an account of all our wages, and we have
+to pay.  It's a shame.
+
+"Our domestic life--our life at home, you mean?  Well, as to that, we
+don't see much of our families.  I leave home at half-past seven in the
+morning, and don't get back again until half-past nine, or maybe later.
+The children are not up when I leave, and they've gone to bed again
+before I come home.  This is about my day:--Leave London at 8.45; drive
+for four hours and a half; cold snack on the engine step; see to engine;
+drive back again; clean engine; report myself; and home.  Twelve hours'
+hard and anxious work, and no comfortable victuals.  Yes, our wives are
+anxious about us; for we never know when we go out, if we'll ever come
+back again.  We ought to go home the minute we leave the station, and
+report ourselves to those that are thinking on us and depending on us;
+but I'm afraid we don't always.  Perhaps we go first to the public-house,
+and perhaps you would, too, if you were in charge of a engine all day
+long.  But the wives have a way of their own, of finding out if we're all
+right.  They inquire among each other.  'Have you seen my Jim?' one says.
+'No,' says another, 'but Jack see him coming out of the station half an
+hour ago.'  Then she knows that her Jim's all right, and knows where to
+find him if she wants him.  It's a sad thing when any of us have to carry
+bad news to a mate's wife.  None of us likes that job.  I remember when
+Jack Davidge was killed, none of us could face his poor missus with the
+news.  She had seven children, poor thing, and two of 'em, the youngest,
+was down with the fever.  We got old Mrs. Berridge--Tom Berridge's
+mother--to break it to her.  But she knew summat was the matter, the
+minute the old woman went in, and, afore she spoke a word, fell down like
+as if she was dead.  She lay all night like that, and never heard from
+mortal lips until next morning that her Jack was killed.  But she knew it
+in her heart.  It's a pitch and toss kind of a life ours!
+
+"And yet I never was nervous on a engine but once.  I never think of my
+own life.  You go in for staking that, when you begin, and you get used
+to the risk.  I never think of the passengers either.  The thoughts of a
+engine-driver never go behind his engine.  If he keeps his engine all
+right, the coaches behind will be all right, as far as the driver is
+concerned.  But once I _did_ think of the passengers.  My little boy,
+Bill, was among them that morning.  He was a poor little cripple fellow
+that we all loved more nor the others, because he _was_ a cripple, and so
+quiet, and wise-like.  He was going down to his aunt in the country, who
+was to take care of him for a while.  We thought the country air would do
+him good.  I did think there were lives behind me that morning; at least,
+I thought hard of one little life that was in my hands.  There were
+twenty coaches on; my little Bill seemed to me to be in every one of 'em.
+My hand trembled as I turned on the steam.  I felt my heart thumping as
+we drew close to the pointsman's box; as we neared the Junction, I was
+all in a cold sweat.  At the end of the first fifty miles I was nearly
+eleven minutes behind time.  'What's the matter with you this morning?'
+my stoker said.  'Did you have a drop too much last night?'  'Don't speak
+to me, Fred,' I said, 'till we get to Peterborough; and keep a sharp
+look-out, there's a good fellow.'  I never was so thankful in my life as
+when I shut off steam to enter the station at Peterborough.  Little
+Bill's aunt was waiting for him, and I saw her lift him out of the
+carriage.  I called out to her to bring him to me, and I took him upon
+the engine and kissed him--ah, twenty times I should think--making him in
+such a mess with grease and coal-dust as you never saw.
+
+"I was all right for the rest of the journey.  And I do believe, sir, the
+passengers were safer after little Bill was gone.  It would never do, you
+see, for engine-drivers to know too much, or to feel too much."
+
+
+
+
+NO. 3 BRANCH LINE
+THE COMPENSATION HOUSE
+
+
+"There's not a looking-glass in all the house, sir.  It's some peculiar
+fancy of my master's.  There isn't one in any single room in the house."
+
+It was a dark and gloomy-looking building, and had been purchased by this
+Company for an enlargement of their Goods Station.  The value of the
+house had been referred to what was popularly called "a compensation
+jury," and the house was called, in consequence, The Compensation House.
+It had become the Company's property; but its tenant still remained in
+possession, pending the commencement of active building operations.  My
+attention was originally drawn to this house because it stood directly in
+front of a collection of huge pieces of timber which lay near this part
+of the Line, and on which I sometimes sat for half an hour at a time,
+when I was tired by my wanderings about Mugby Junction.
+
+It was square, cold, grey-looking, built of rough-hewn stone, and roofed
+with thin slabs of the same material.  Its windows were few in number,
+and very small for the size of the building.  In the great blank, grey
+broad-side, there were only four windows.  The entrance-door was in the
+middle of the house; there was a window on either side of it, and there
+were two more in the single story above.  The blinds were all closely
+drawn, and, when the door was shut, the dreary building gave no sign of
+life or occupation.
+
+But the door was not always shut.  Sometimes it was opened from within,
+with a great jingling of bolts and door-chains, and then a man would come
+forward and stand upon the door-step, snuffing the air as one might do
+who was ordinarily kept on rather a small allowance of that element.  He
+was stout, thick-set, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old--a man whose
+hair was cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy beard, and whose
+eye had a sociable twinkle in it which was prepossessing.  He was
+dressed, whenever I saw him, in a greenish-brown frock-coat made of some
+material which was not cloth, wore a waistcoat and trousers of light
+colour, and had a frill to his shirt--an ornament, by the way, which did
+not seem to go at all well with the beard, which was continually in
+contact with it.  It was the custom of this worthy person, after standing
+for a short time on the threshold inhaling the air, to come forward into
+the road, and, after glancing at one of the upper windows in a half
+mechanical way, to cross over to the logs, and, leaning over the fence
+which guarded the railway, to look up and down the Line (it passed before
+the house) with the air of a man accomplishing a self-imposed task of
+which nothing was expected to come.  This done, he would cross the road
+again, and turning on the threshold to take a final sniff of air,
+disappeared once more within the house, bolting and chaining the door
+again as if there were no probability of its being reopened for at least
+a week.  Yet half an hour had not passed before he was out in the road
+again, sniffing the air and looking up and down the Line as before.
+
+It was not very long before I managed to scrape acquaintance with this
+restless personage.  I soon found out that my friend with the shirt-frill
+was the confidential servant, butler, valet, factotum, what you will, of
+a sick gentleman, a Mr. Oswald Strange, who had recently come to inhabit
+the house opposite, and concerning whose history my new acquaintance,
+whose name I ascertained was Masey, seemed disposed to be somewhat
+communicative.  His master, it appeared, had come down to this place,
+partly for the sake of reducing his establishment--not, Mr. Masey was
+swift to inform me, on economical principles, but because the poor
+gentleman, for particular reasons, wished to have few dependents about
+him--partly in order that he might be near his old friend, Dr. Garden,
+who was established in the neighbourhood, and whose society and advice
+were necessary to Mr. Strange's life.  That life was, it appeared, held
+by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure.  It was ebbing away
+fast with each passing hour.  The servant already spoke of his master in
+the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than
+five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features
+and build of it went, but with an expression which had nothing of youth
+about it.  This was the great peculiarity of the man.  At a distance he
+looked younger than he was by many years, and strangers, at the time when
+he had been used to get about, always took him for a man of seven or
+eight-and-twenty, but they changed their minds on getting nearer to him.
+Old Masey had a way of his own of summing up the peculiarities of his
+master, repeating twenty times over: "Sir, he was Strange by name, and
+Strange by nature, and Strange to look at into the bargain."
+
+It was during my second or third interview with the old fellow that he
+uttered the words quoted at the beginning of this plain narrative.
+
+"Not such a thing as a looking-glass in all the house," the old man said,
+standing beside my piece of timber, and looking across reflectively at
+the house opposite.  "Not one."
+
+"In the sitting-rooms, I suppose you mean?"
+
+"No, sir, I mean sitting-rooms and bedrooms both; there isn't so much as
+a shaving-glass as big as the palm of your hand anywhere."
+
+"But how is it?" I asked.  "Why are there no looking-glasses in any of
+the rooms?"
+
+"Ah, sir!" replied Masey, "that's what none of us can ever tell.  There
+is the mystery.  It's just a fancy on the part of my master.  He had some
+strange fancies, and this was one of them.  A pleasant gentleman he was
+to live with, as any servant could desire.  A liberal gentleman, and one
+who gave but little trouble; always ready with a kind word, and a kind
+deed, too, for the matter of that.  There was not a house in all the
+parish of St. George's (in which we lived before we came down here) where
+the servants had more holidays or a better table kept; but, for all that,
+he had his queer ways and his fancies, as I may call them, and this was
+one of them.  And the point he made of it, sir," the old man went on;
+"the extent to which that regulation was enforced, whenever a new servant
+was engaged; and the changes in the establishment it occasioned.  In
+hiring a new servant, the very first stipulation made, was that about the
+looking-glasses.  It was one of my duties to explain the thing, as far as
+it could be explained, before any servant was taken into the house.
+'You'll find it an easy place,' I used to say, 'with a liberal table,
+good wages, and a deal of leisure; but there's one thing you must make up
+your mind to; you must do without looking-glasses while you're here, for
+there isn't one in the house, and, what's more, there never will be.'"
+
+"But how did you know there never would be one?" I asked.
+
+"Lor' bless you, sir!  If you'd seen and heard all that I'd seen and
+heard, you could have no doubt about it.  Why, only to take one
+instance:--I remember a particular day when my master had occasion to go
+into the housekeeper's room where the cook lived, to see about some
+alterations that were making, and when a pretty scene took place.  The
+cook--she was a very ugly woman, and awful vain--had left a little bit of
+looking-glass, about six inches square, upon the chimney-piece; she had
+got it _surreptious_, and kept it always locked up; but she'd left it
+out, being called away suddenly, while titivating her hair.  I had seen
+the glass, and was making for the chimney-piece as fast as I could; but
+master came in front of it before I could get there, and it was all over
+in a moment.  He gave one long piercing look into it, turned deadly pale,
+and seizing the glass, dashed it into a hundred pieces on the floor, and
+then stamped upon the fragments and ground them into powder with his
+feet.  He shut himself up for the rest of that day in his own room, first
+ordering me to discharge the cook, then and there, at a moment's notice."
+
+"What an extraordinary thing!" I said, pondering.
+
+"Ah, sir," continued the old man, "it was astonishing what trouble I had
+with those women-servants.  It was difficult to get any that would take
+the place at all under the circumstances.  'What not so much as a mossul
+to do one's 'air at?' they would say, and they'd go off, in spite of
+extra wages.  Then those who did consent to come, what lies they would
+tell, to be sure!  They would protest that they didn't want to look in
+the glass, that they never had been in the habit of looking in the glass,
+and all the while that very wench would have her looking-glass of some
+kind or another, hid away among her clothes up-stairs.  Sooner or later,
+she would bring it out too, and leave it about somewhere or other (just
+like the cook), where it was as likely as not that master might see it.
+And then--for girls like that have no consciences, sir--when I had caught
+one of 'em at it, she'd turn round as bold as brass, 'And how am I to
+know whether my 'air's parted straight?' she'd say, just as if it hadn't
+been considered in her wages that that was the very thing which she never
+_was_ to know while she lived in our house.  A vain lot, sir, and the
+ugly ones always the vainest.  There was no end to their dodges.  They'd
+have looking-glasses in the interiors of their workbox-lids, where it was
+next to impossible that I could find 'em, or inside the covers of
+hymn-books, or cookery-books, or in their caddies.  I recollect one girl,
+a sly one she was, and marked with the small-pox terrible, who was always
+reading her prayer-book at odd times.  Sometimes I used to think what a
+religious mind she'd got, and at other times (depending on the mood I was
+in) I would conclude that it was the marriage-service she was studying;
+but one day, when I got behind her to satisfy my doubts--lo and behold!
+it was the old story: a bit of glass, without a frame, fastened into the
+kiver with the outside edges of the sheets of postage-stamps.  Dodges!
+Why they'd keep their looking-glasses in the scullery or the coal-cellar,
+or leave them in charge of the servants next door, or with the milk-woman
+round the corner; but have 'em they would.  And I don't mind confessing,
+sir," said the old man, bringing his long speech to an end, "that it
+_was_ an inconveniency not to have so much as a scrap to shave before.  I
+used to go to the barber's at first, but I soon gave that up, and took to
+wearing my beard as my master did; likewise to keeping my hair"--Mr.
+Masey touched his head as he spoke--"so short, that it didn't require any
+parting, before or behind."
+
+I sat for some time lost in amazement, and staring at my companion.  My
+curiosity was powerfully stimulated, and the desire to learn more was
+very strong within me.
+
+"Had your master any personal defect," I inquired, "which might have made
+it distressing to him to see his own image reflected?"
+
+"By no means, sir," said the old man.  "He was as handsome a gentleman as
+you would wish to see: a little delicate-looking and careworn, perhaps,
+with a very pale face; but as free from any deformity as you or I, sir.
+No, sir, no; it was nothing of that."
+
+"Then what was it?  What is it?" I asked, desperately.  "Is there no one
+who is, or has been, in your master's confidence?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the old fellow, with his eyes turning to that window
+opposite.  "There is one person who knows all my master's secrets, and
+this secret among the rest."
+
+"And who is that?"
+
+The old man turned round and looked at me fixedly.  "The doctor here," he
+said.  "Dr. Garden.  My master's very old friend."
+
+"I should like to speak with this gentleman," I said, involuntarily.
+
+"He is with my master now," answered Masey.  "He will be coming out
+presently, and I think I may say he will answer any question you may like
+to put to him."  As the old man spoke, the door of the house opened, and
+a middle-aged gentleman, who was tall and thin, but who lost something of
+his height by a habit of stooping, appeared on the step.  Old Masey left
+me in a moment.  He muttered something about taking the doctor's
+directions, and hastened across the road.  The tall gentleman spoke to
+him for a minute or two very seriously, probably about the patient
+up-stairs, and it then seemed to me from their gestures that I myself was
+the subject of some further conversation between them.  At all events,
+when old Masey retired into the house, the doctor came across to where I
+was standing, and addressed me with a very agreeable smile.
+
+"John Masey tells me that you are interested in the case of my poor
+friend, sir.  I am now going back to my house, and if you don't mind the
+trouble of walking with me, I shall be happy to enlighten you as far as I
+am able."
+
+I hastened to make my apologies and express my acknowledgments, and we
+set off together.  When we had reached the doctor's house and were seated
+in his study, I ventured to inquire after the health of this poor
+gentleman.
+
+"I am afraid there is no amendment, nor any prospect of amendment," said
+the doctor.  "Old Masey has told you something of his strange condition,
+has he not?"
+
+"Yes, he has told me something," I answered, "and he says you know all
+about it."
+
+Dr. Garden looked very grave.  "I don't know all about it.  I only know
+what happens when he comes into the presence of a looking-glass.  But as
+to the circumstances which have led to his being haunted in the strangest
+fashion that I ever heard of, I know no more of them than you do."
+
+"Haunted?" I repeated.  "And in the strangest fashion that you ever heard
+of?"
+
+Dr. Garden smiled at my eagerness, seemed to be collecting his thoughts,
+and presently went on:
+
+"I made the acquaintance of Mr. Oswald Strange in a curious way.  It was
+on board of an Italian steamer, bound from Civita Vecchia to Marseilles.
+We had been travelling all night.  In the morning I was shaving myself in
+the cabin, when suddenly this man came behind me, glanced for a moment
+into the small mirror before which I was standing, and then, without a
+word of warning, tore it from the nail, and dashed it to pieces at my
+feet.  His face was at first livid with passion--it seemed to me rather
+the passion of fear than of anger--but it changed after a moment, and he
+seemed ashamed of what he had done.  Well," continued the doctor,
+relapsing for a moment into a smile, "of course I was in a devil of a
+rage.  I was operating on my under-jaw, and the start the thing gave me
+caused me to cut myself.  Besides, altogether it seemed an outrageous and
+insolent thing, and I gave it to poor Strange in a style of language
+which I am sorry to think of now, but which, I hope, was excusable at the
+time.  As to the offender himself, his confusion and regret, now that his
+passion was at an end, disarmed me.  He sent for the steward, and paid
+most liberally for the damage done to the steam-boat property, explaining
+to him, and to some other passengers who were present in the cabin, that
+what had happened had been accidental.  For me, however, he had another
+explanation.  Perhaps he felt that I must know it to have been no
+accident--perhaps he really wished to confide in some one.  At all
+events, he owned to me that what he had done was done under the influence
+of an uncontrollable impulse--a seizure which took him, he said, at
+times--something like a fit.  He begged my pardon, and entreated that I
+would endeavour to disassociate him personally from this action, of which
+he was heartily ashamed.  Then he attempted a sickly joke, poor fellow,
+about his wearing a beard, and feeling a little spiteful, in consequence,
+when he saw other people taking the trouble to shave; but he said nothing
+about any infirmity or delusion, and shortly after left me.
+
+"In my professional capacity I could not help taking some interest in Mr.
+Strange.  I did not altogether lose sight of him after our sea-journey to
+Marseilles was over.  I found him a pleasant companion up to a certain
+point; but I always felt that there was a reserve about him.  He was
+uncommunicative about his past life, and especially would never allude to
+anything connected with his travels or his residence in Italy, which,
+however, I could make out had been a long one.  He spoke Italian well,
+and seemed familiar with the country, but disliked to talk about it.
+
+"During the time we spent together there were seasons when he was so
+little himself, that I, with a pretty large experience, was almost afraid
+to be with him.  His attacks were violent and sudden in the last degree;
+and there was one most extraordinary feature connected with them
+all:--some horrible association of ideas took possession of him whenever
+he found himself before a looking-glass.  And after we had travelled
+together for a time, I dreaded the sight of a mirror hanging harmlessly
+against a wall, or a toilet-glass standing on a dressing-table, almost as
+much as he did.
+
+"Poor Strange was not always affected in the same manner by a
+looking-glass.  Sometimes it seemed to madden him with fury; at other
+times, it appeared to turn him to stone: remaining motionless and
+speechless as if attacked by catalepsy.  One night--the worst things
+always happen at night, and oftener than one would think on stormy
+nights--we arrived at a small town in the central district of Auvergne: a
+place but little known, out of the line of railways, and to which we had
+been drawn, partly by the antiquarian attractions which the place
+possessed, and partly by the beauty of the scenery.  The weather had been
+rather against us.  The day had been dull and murky, the heat stifling,
+and the sky had threatened mischief since the morning.  At sundown, these
+threats were fulfilled.  The thunderstorm, which had been all day coming
+up--as it seemed to us, against the wind--burst over the place where we
+were lodged, with very great violence.
+
+"There are some practical-minded persons with strong constitutions, who
+deny roundly that their fellow-creatures are, or can be, affected, in
+mind or body, by atmospheric influences.  I am not a disciple of that
+school, simply because I cannot believe that those changes of weather,
+which have so much effect upon animals, and even on inanimate objects,
+can fail to have some influence on a piece of machinery so sensitive and
+intricate as the human frame.  I think, then, that it was in part owing
+to the disturbed state of the atmosphere that, on this particular evening
+I felt nervous and depressed.  When my new friend Strange and I parted
+for the night, I felt as little disposed to go to rest as I ever did in
+my life.  The thunder was still lingering among the mountains in the
+midst of which our inn was placed.  Sometimes it seemed nearer, and at
+other times further off; but it never left off altogether, except for a
+few minutes at a time.  I was quite unable to shake off a succession of
+painful ideas which persistently besieged my mind.
+
+"It is hardly necessary to add that I thought from time to time of my
+travelling-companion in the next room.  His image was almost continually
+before me.  He had been dull and depressed all the evening, and when we
+parted for the night there was a look in his eyes which I could not get
+out of my memory.
+
+"There was a door between our rooms, and the partition dividing them was
+not very solid; and yet I had heard no sound since I parted from him
+which could indicate that he was there at all, much less that he was
+awake and stirring.  I was in a mood, sir, which made this silence
+terrible to me, and so many foolish fancies--as that he was lying there
+dead, or in a fit, or what not--took possession of me, that at last I
+could bear it no longer.  I went to the door, and, after listening, very
+attentively but quite in vain, for any sound, I at last knocked pretty
+sharply.  There was no answer.  Feeling that longer suspense would be
+unendurable, I, without more ceremony, turned the handle and went in.
+
+"It was a great bare room, and so imperfectly lighted by a single candle
+that it was almost impossible--except when the lightning flashed--to see
+into its great dark corners.  A small rickety bedstead stood against one
+of the walls, shrouded by yellow cotton curtains, passed through a great
+iron ring in the ceiling.  There was, for all other furniture, an old
+chest of drawers which served also as a washing-stand, having a small
+basin and ewer and a single towel arranged on the top of it.  There were,
+moreover, two ancient chairs and a dressing-table.  On this last, stood a
+large old-fashioned looking-glass with a carved frame.
+
+"I must have seen all these things, because I remember them so well now,
+but I do not know how I could have seen them, for it seems to me that,
+from the moment of my entering that room, the action of my senses and of
+the faculties of my mind was held fast by the ghastly figure which stood
+motionless before the looking-glass in the middle of the empty room.
+
+"How terrible it was!  The weak light of one candle standing on the table
+shone upon Strange's face, lighting it from below, and throwing (as I now
+remember) his shadow, vast and black, upon the wall behind him and upon
+the ceiling overhead.  He was leaning rather forward, with his hands upon
+the table supporting him, and gazing into the glass which stood before
+him with a horrible fixity.  The sweat was on his white face; his rigid
+features and his pale lips showed in that feeble light were horrible,
+more than words can tell, to look at.  He was so completely stupefied and
+lost, that the noise I had made in knocking and in entering the room was
+unobserved by him.  Not even when I called him loudly by name did he move
+or did his face change.
+
+"What a vision of horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a
+silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen
+into stone by some unexplained terror!  And the silence and the
+stillness!  The very thunder had ceased now.  My heart stood still with
+fear.  Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose influence I
+acted mechanically, I crept with slow steps nearer and nearer to the
+table, and at last, half expecting to see some spectre even more horrible
+than this which I saw already, I looked over his shoulder into the
+looking-glass.  I happened to touch his arm, though only in the lightest
+manner.  In that one moment the spell which had held him--who knows how
+long?--enchained, seemed broken, and he lived in this world again.  He
+turned round upon me, as suddenly as a tiger makes its spring, and seized
+me by the arm.
+
+"I have told you that even before I entered my friend's room I had felt,
+all that night, depressed and nervous.  The necessity for action at this
+time was, however, so obvious, and this man's agony made all that I had
+felt, appear so trifling, that much of my own discomfort seemed to leave
+me.  I felt that I _must_ be strong.
+
+"The face before me almost unmanned me.  The eyes which looked into mine
+were so scared with terror, the lips--if I may say so--looked so
+speechless.  The wretched man gazed long into my face, and then, still
+holding me by the arm, slowly, very slowly, turned his head.  I had
+gently tried to move him away from the looking-glass, but he would not
+stir, and now he was looking into it as fixedly as ever.  I could bear
+this no longer, and, using such force as was necessary, I drew him
+gradually away, and got him to one of the chairs at the foot of the bed.
+'Come!' I said--after the long silence my voice, even to myself, sounded
+strange and hollow--'come!  You are over-tired, and you feel the weather.
+Don't you think you ought to be in bed?  Suppose you lie down.  Let me
+try my medical skill in mixing you a composing draught.'
+
+"He held my hand, and looked eagerly into my eyes.  'I am better now,' he
+said, speaking at last very faintly.  Still he looked at me in that
+wistful way.  It seemed as if there were something that he wanted to do
+or say, but had not sufficient resolution.  At length he got up from the
+chair to which I had led him, and beckoning me to follow him, went across
+the room to the dressing-table, and stood again before the glass.  A
+violent shudder passed through his frame as he looked into it; but
+apparently forcing himself to go through with what he had now begun, he
+remained where he was, and, without looking away, moved to me with his
+hand to come and stand beside him.  I complied.
+
+"'Look in there!' he said, in an almost inaudible tone.  He was
+supported, as before, by his hands resting on the table, and could only
+bow with his head towards the glass to intimate what he meant.  'Look in
+there!' he repeated.
+
+"I did as he asked me.
+
+"'What do you see?' he asked next.
+
+"'See?' I repeated, trying to speak as cheerfully as I could, and
+describing the reflexion of his own face as nearly as I could.  'I see a
+very, very pale face with sunken cheeks--'
+
+"'What?' he cried, with an alarm in his voice which I could not
+understand.
+
+"'With sunken cheeks,' I went on, 'and two hollow eyes with large
+pupils.'
+
+"I saw the reflexion of my friend's face change, and felt his hand clutch
+my arm even more tightly than he had done before.  I stopped abruptly and
+looked round at him.  He did not turn his head towards me, but, gazing
+still into the looking-glass, seemed to labour for utterance.
+
+"'What,' he stammered at last.  'Do you--see it--too?'
+
+"'See what?' I asked, quickly.
+
+"'That face!' he cried, in accents of horror.  'That face--which is not
+mine--and which--I SEE INSTEAD OF MINE--always!'
+
+"I was struck speechless by the words.  In a moment this mystery was
+explained--but what an explanation!  Worse, a hundred times worse, than
+anything I had imagined.  What!  Had this man lost the power of seeing
+his own image as it was reflected there before him? and, in its place,
+was there the image of another?  Had he changed reflexions with some
+other man?  The frightfulness of the thought struck me speechless for a
+time--then I saw how false an impression my silence was conveying.
+
+"'No, no, no!' I cried, as soon as I could speak--'a hundred times, no!
+I see you, of course, and only you.  It was your face I attempted to
+describe, and no other.'
+
+"He seemed not to hear me.  'Why, look there!' he said, in a low,
+indistinct voice, pointing to his own image in the glass.  'Whose face do
+you see there?'
+
+"'Why yours, of course.'  And then, after a moment, I added, 'Whose do
+you see?'
+
+"He answered, like one in a trance, '_His_--only his--always his!'  He
+stood still a moment, and then, with a loud and terrific scream, repeated
+those words, 'ALWAYS HIS, ALWAYS HIS,' and fell down in a fit before me.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+"I knew what to do now.  Here was a thing which, at any rate, I could
+understand.  I had with me my usual small stock of medicines and surgical
+instruments, and I did what was necessary: first to restore my unhappy
+patient, and next to procure for him the rest he needed so much.  He was
+very ill--at death's door for some days--and I could not leave him,
+though there was urgent need that I should be back in London.  When he
+began to mend, I sent over to England for my servant--John Masey--whom I
+knew I could trust.  Acquainting him with the outlines of the case, I
+left him in charge of my patient, with orders that he should be brought
+over to this country as soon as he was fit to travel.
+
+"That awful scene was always before me.  I saw this devoted man day after
+day, with the eyes of my imagination, sometimes destroying in his rage
+the harmless looking-glass, which was the immediate cause of his
+suffering, sometimes transfixed before the horrid image that turned him
+to stone.  I recollect coming upon him once when we were stopping at a
+roadside inn, and seeing him stand so by broad daylight.  His back was
+turned towards me, and I waited and watched him for nearly half an hour
+as he stood there motionless and speechless, and appearing not to
+breathe.  I am not sure but that this apparition seen so by daylight was
+more ghastly than that apparition seen in the middle of the night, with
+the thunder rumbling among the hills.
+
+"Back in London in his own house, where he could command in some sort the
+objects which should surround him, poor Strange was better than he would
+have been elsewhere.  He seldom went out except at night, but once or
+twice I have walked with him by daylight, and have seen him terribly
+agitated when we have had to pass a shop in which looking-glasses were
+exposed for sale.
+
+"It is nearly a year now since my poor friend followed me down to this
+place, to which I have retired.  For some months he has been daily
+getting weaker and weaker, and a disease of the lungs has become
+developed in him, which has brought him to his death-bed.  I should add,
+by-the-by, that John Masey has been his constant companion ever since I
+brought them together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a new
+servant.
+
+"And now tell me," the doctor added, bringing his tale to an end, "did
+you ever hear a more miserable history, or was ever man haunted in a more
+ghastly manner than this man?"
+
+I was about to reply when I heard a sound of footsteps outside, and
+before I could speak old Masey entered the room, in haste and disorder.
+
+"I was just telling this gentleman," the doctor said: not at the moment
+observing old Masey's changed manner: "how you deserted me to go over to
+your present master."
+
+"Ah! sir," the man answered, in a troubled voice, "I'm afraid he won't be
+my master long."
+
+The doctor was on his legs in a moment.  "What!  Is he worse?"
+
+"I think, sir, he is dying," said the old man.
+
+"Come with me, sir; you may be of use if you can keep quiet."  The doctor
+caught up his hat as he addressed me in those words, and in a few minutes
+we had reached The Compensation House.  A few seconds more, and we were
+standing in a darkened room on the first floor, and I saw lying on a bed
+before me--pale, emaciated, and, as it seemed, dying--the man whose story
+I had just heard.
+
+He was lying with closed eyes when we came into the room, and I had
+leisure to examine his features.  What a tale of misery they told!  They
+were regular and symmetrical in their arrangement, and not without
+beauty--the beauty of exceeding refinement and delicacy.  Force there was
+none, and perhaps it was to the want of this that the faults--perhaps the
+crime--which had made the man's life so miserable were to be attributed.
+Perhaps the crime?  Yes, it was not likely that an affliction, lifelong
+and terrible, such as this he had endured, would come upon him unless
+some misdeed had provoked the punishment.  What misdeed we were soon to
+know.
+
+It sometimes--I think generally--happens that the presence of any one who
+stands and watches beside a sleeping man will wake him, unless his
+slumbers are unusually heavy.  It was so now.  While we looked at him,
+the sleeper awoke very suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon us.  He put out
+his hand and took the doctor's in its feeble grasp.  "Who is that?" he
+asked next, pointing towards me.
+
+"Do you wish him to go?  The gentleman knows something of your
+sufferings, and is powerfully interested in your case; but he will leave
+us, if you wish it," the doctor said.
+
+"No.  Let him stay."
+
+Seating myself out of sight, but where I could both see and hear what
+passed, I waited for what should follow.  Dr. Garden and John Masey stood
+beside the bed.  There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I want a looking-glass," said Strange, without a word of preface.
+
+We all started to hear him say those words.  "I am dying," said Strange;
+"will you not grant me my request?"
+
+Doctor Garden whispered to old Masey; and the latter left the room.  He
+was not absent long, having gone no further than the next house.  He held
+an oval-framed mirror in his hand when he returned.  A shudder passed
+through the body of the sick man as he saw it.
+
+"Put it down," he said, faintly--"anywhere--for the present."
+
+No one of us spoke.  I do not think, in that moment of suspense, that we
+could, any of us, have spoken if we had tried.
+
+The sick man tried to raise himself a little.  "Prop me up," he said.  "I
+speak with difficulty--I have something to say."
+
+They put pillows behind him, so as to raise his head and body.
+
+"I have presently a use for it," he said, indicating the mirror.  "I want
+to see--"  He stopped, and seemed to change his mind.  He was sparing of
+his words.  "I want to tell you--all about it."  Again he was silent.
+Then he seemed to make a great effort and spoke once more, beginning very
+abruptly.
+
+"I loved my wife fondly.  I loved her--her name was Lucy.  She was
+English; but, after we were married, we lived long abroad--in Italy.  She
+liked the country, and I liked what she liked.  She liked to draw, too,
+and I got her a master.  He was an Italian.  I will not give his name.
+We always called him 'the Master.'  A treacherous insidious man this was,
+and, under cover of his profession, took advantage of his opportunities,
+and taught my wife to love him--to love him.
+
+"I am short of breath.  I need not enter into details as to how I found
+them out; but I did find them out.  We were away on a sketching
+expedition when I made my discovery.  My rage maddened me, and there was
+one at hand who fomented my madness.  My wife had a maid, who, it seemed,
+had also loved this man--the Master--and had been ill treated and
+deserted by him.  She told me all.  She had played the part of
+go-between--had carried letters.  When she told me these things, it was
+night, in a solitary Italian town, among the mountains.  'He is in his
+room now,' she said, 'writing to her.'
+
+"A frenzy took possession of me as I listened to those words.  I am
+naturally vindictive--remember that--and now my longing for revenge was
+like a thirst.  Travelling in those lonely regions, I was armed, and when
+the woman said, 'He is writing to your wife,' I laid hold of my pistols,
+as by an instinct.  It has been some comfort to me since, that I took
+them both.  Perhaps, at that moment, I may have meant fairly by
+him--meant that we should fight.  I don't know what I meant, quite.  The
+woman's words, 'He is in his own room now, writing to her,' rung in my
+ears."
+
+The sick man stopped to take breath.  It seemed an hour, though it was
+probably not more than two minutes, before he spoke again.
+
+"I managed to get into his room unobserved.  Indeed, he was altogether
+absorbed in what he was doing.  He was sitting at the only table in the
+room, writing at a travelling-desk, by the light of a single candle.  It
+was a rude dressing-table, and--and before him--exactly before him--there
+was--there was a looking-glass.
+
+"I stole up behind him as he sat and wrote by the light of the candle.  I
+looked over his shoulder at the letter, and I read, 'Dearest Lucy, my
+love, my darling.'  As I read the words, I pulled the trigger of the
+pistol I held in my right hand, and killed him--killed him--but, before
+he died, he looked up once--not at me, but at my image before him in the
+glass, and his face--such a face--has been there--ever since, and
+mine--my face--is gone!"
+
+He fell back exhausted, and we all pressed forward thinking that he must
+be dead, he lay so still.
+
+But he had not yet passed away.  He revived under the influence of
+stimulants.  He tried to speak, and muttered indistinctly from time to
+time words of which we could sometimes make no sense.  We understood,
+however, that he had been tried by an Italian tribunal, and had been
+found guilty; but with such extenuating circumstances that his sentence
+was commuted to imprisonment, during, we thought we made out, two years.
+But we could not understand what he said about his wife, though we
+gathered that she was still alive, from something he whispered to the
+doctor of there being provision made for her in his will.
+
+He lay in a doze for something more than an hour after he had told his
+tale, and then he woke up quite suddenly, as he had done when we had
+first entered the room.  He looked round uneasily in all directions,
+until his eye fell on the looking-glass.
+
+"I want it," he said, hastily; but I noticed that he did not shudder now,
+as it was brought near.  When old Masey approached, holding it in his
+hand, and crying like a child, Dr. Garden came forward and stood between
+him and his master, taking the hand of poor Strange in his.
+
+"Is this wise?" he asked.  "Is it good, do you think, to revive this
+misery of your life now, when it is so near its close?  The chastisement
+of your crime," he added, solemnly, "has been a terrible one.  Let us
+hope in God's mercy that your punishment is over."
+
+The dying man raised himself with a last great effort, and looked up at
+the doctor with such an expression on his face as none of us had seen on
+any face, before.
+
+"I do hope so," he said, faintly, "but you must let me have my way in
+this--for if, now, when I look, I see aright--once more--I shall then
+hope yet more strongly--for I shall take it as a sign."
+
+The doctor stood aside without another word, when he heard the dying man
+speak thus, and the old servant drew near, and, stooping over softly,
+held the looking-glass before his master.  Presently afterwards, we, who
+stood around looking breathlessly at him, saw such a rapture upon his
+face, as left no doubt upon our minds that the face which had haunted him
+so long, had, in his last hour, disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+NO. 4 BRANCH LINE
+THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE
+
+
+Many years ago, and before this Line was so much as projected, I was
+engaged as a clerk in a Travelling Post-office running along the Line of
+railway from London to a town in the Midland Counties, which we will call
+Fazeley.  My duties were to accompany the mail-train which left Fazeley
+at 8.15 P.M., and arrived in London about midnight, and to return by the
+day mail leaving London at 10.30 the following morning, after which I had
+an unbroken night at Fazeley, while another clerk discharged the same
+round of work; and in this way each alternative evening I was on duty in
+the railway post-office van.  At first I suffered a little from a hurry
+and tremor of nerve in pursuing my occupation while the train was
+crashing along under bridges and through tunnels at a speed which was
+then thought marvellous and perilous; but it was not long before my hands
+and eyes became accustomed to the motion of the carriage, and I could go
+through my business with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office
+of the country town where I had learned it, and from which I had been
+promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district, Mr.
+Huntingdon.  In fact, the work soon fell into a monotonous routine,
+which, night after night, was pursued in an unbroken course by myself and
+the junior clerk, who was my only assistant: the railway post-office work
+not having then attained the importance and magnitude it now possesses.
+
+Our route lay through an agricultural district containing many small
+towns, which made up two or three bags only; one for London; another
+perhaps for the county town; a third for the railway post-office, to be
+opened by us, and the enclosures to be distributed according to their
+various addresses.  The clerks in many of these small offices were women,
+as is very generally the case still, being the daughters and female
+relatives of the nominal postmaster, who transact most of the business of
+the office, and whose names are most frequently signed upon the bills
+accompanying the bags.  I was a young man, and somewhat more curious in
+feminine handwriting than I am now.  There was one family in particular,
+whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly
+familiar--clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl
+upon other letter-bills.  One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I
+tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon
+which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all."  The next evening
+brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, by three
+sisters of the name of Clifton.  From that day, every now and then, a
+sentence or two as brief as the one above passed between us, and the
+feeling of acquaintance and friendship grew upon me, though I had never
+yet had an opportunity of seeing my fair unknown friends.
+
+It was towards the close of the following October that it came under my
+notice that the then Premier of the ministry was paying an autumn visit
+to a nobleman, whose country seat was situated near a small village on
+our line of rail.  The Premier's despatch-box, containing, of course, all
+the despatches which it was necessary to send down to him, passed between
+him and the Secretary of State, and was, as usual, entrusted to the care
+of the post-office.  The Continent was just then in a more than
+ordinarily critical state; we were thought to be upon the verge of an
+European war; and there were murmurs floating about, at the dispersion of
+the ministry up and down the country.  These circumstances made the
+charge of the despatch-box the more interesting to me.  It was very
+similar in size and shape to the old-fashioned workboxes used by ladies
+before boxes of polished and ornamental wood came into vogue, and, like
+them, it was covered with red morocco leather, and it fastened with a
+lock and key.  The first time it came into my hands I took such special
+notice of it as might be expected.  Upon one corner of the lid I detected
+a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it, most probably with the
+sharp point of a steel pen, in such a moment of preoccupation of mind as
+causes most of us to draw odd lines and caricatured faces upon any piece
+of paper which may lie under our hand.  It was the old revolutionary
+device of a heart with a dagger piercing it; and I wondered whether it
+could be the Premier, or one of his secretaries, who had traced it upon
+the morocco.
+
+This box had been travelling up and down for about ten days, and, as the
+village did not make up a bag for London, there being very few letters
+excepting those from the great house, the letter-bag from the house, and
+the despatch-box, were handed direct into our travelling post-office.
+But in compliment to the presence of the Premier in the neighbourhood,
+the train, instead of slackening speed only, stopped altogether, in order
+that the Premier's trusty and confidential messenger might deliver the
+important box into my own hands, that its perfect safety might be
+ensured.  I had an undefined suspicion that some person was also employed
+to accompany the train up to London, for three or four times I had met
+with a foreign-looking gentleman at Euston-square, standing at the door
+of the carriage nearest the post-office van, and eyeing the heavy bags as
+they were transferred from my care to the custody of the officials from
+the General Post-office.  But though I felt amused and somewhat nettled
+at this needless precaution, I took no further notice of the man, except
+to observe that he had the swarthy aspect of a foreigner, and that he
+kept his face well away from the light of the lamps.  Except for these
+things, and after the first time or two, the Premier's despatch-box
+interested me no more than any other part of my charge.  My work had been
+doubly monotonous for some time past, and I began to think it time to get
+up some little entertainment with my unknown friends, the Cliftons.  I
+was just thinking of it as the train stopped at the station about a mile
+from the town where they lived, and their postman, a gruff matter-of-fact
+fellow--you could see it in every line of his face--put in the
+letter-bags, and with them a letter addressed to me.  It was in an
+official envelope, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal was an
+official seal.  On the folded paper inside it (folded officially also) I
+read the following order: "Mr. Wilcox is requested to permit the bearer,
+the daughter of the postmaster at Eaton, to see the working of the
+railway post-office during the up-journey."  The writing I knew well as
+being that of one of the surveyor's clerks, and the signature was Mr.
+Huntingdon's.  The bearer of the order presented herself at the door, the
+snorting of the engine gave notice of the instant departure of the train,
+I held out my hand, the young lady sprang lightly and deftly into the
+van, and we were off again on our midnight journey.
+
+She was a small slight creature, one of those slender little girls one
+never thinks of as being a woman, dressed neatly and plainly in a dark
+dress, with a veil hanging a little over her face and tied under her
+chin: the most noticeable thing about her appearance being a great mass
+of light hair, almost yellow, which had got loose in some way, and fell
+down her neck in thick wavy tresses.  She had a free pleasant way about
+her, not in the least bold or forward, which in a minute or two made her
+presence seem the most natural thing in the world.  As she stood beside
+me before the row of boxes into which I was sorting my letters, she asked
+questions and I answered as if it were quite an every-day occurrence for
+us to be travelling up together in the night mail to Euston-square
+station.  I blamed myself for an idiot that I had not sooner made an
+opportunity for visiting my unknown friends at Eaton.
+
+"Then," I said, putting down the letter-bill from their own office before
+her, "may I ask which of the signatures I know so well, is yours?  Is it
+A. Clifton, or M. Clifton, or S. Clifton?"  She hesitated a little, and
+blushed, and lifted up her frank childlike eyes to mine.
+
+"I am A. Clifton," she answered.
+
+"And your name?" I said.
+
+"Anne;" then, as if anxious to give some explanation to me of her present
+position, she added, "I was going up to London on a visit, and I thought
+it would be so nice to travel in the post-office to see how the work was
+done, and Mr. Huntingdon came to survey our office, and he said he would
+send me an order."
+
+I felt somewhat surprised, for a stricter martinet than Mr. Huntingdon
+did not breathe; but I glanced down at the small innocent face at my
+side, and cordially approved of his departure from ordinary rules.
+
+"Did you know you would travel with me?" I asked, in a lower voice; for
+Tom Morville, my junior, was at my other elbow.
+
+"I knew I should travel with Mr. Wilcox," she answered, with a smile that
+made all my nerves tingle.
+
+"You have not written me a word for ages," said I, reproachfully.
+
+"You had better not talk, or you'll be making mistakes," she replied, in
+an arch tone.  It was quite true; for, a sudden confusion coming over me,
+I was sorting the letters at random.
+
+We were just then approaching the small station where the letter-bag from
+the great house was taken up.  The engine was slackening speed.  Miss
+Clifton manifested some natural and becoming diffidence.
+
+"It would look so odd," she said, "to any one on the platform, to see a
+girl in the post-office van!  And they couldn't know I was a postmaster's
+daughter, and had an order from Mr. Huntingdon.  Is there no dark corner
+to shelter me?"
+
+I must explain to you in a word or two the construction of the van, which
+was much less efficiently fitted up than the travelling post-offices of
+the present day.  It was a reversible van, with a door at each right-hand
+corner.  At each door the letter-boxes were so arranged as to form a kind
+of screen about two feet in width, which prevented people from seeing all
+over the carriage at once.  Thus the door at the far end of the van, the
+one not in use at the time, was thrown into deep shadow, and the screen
+before it turned it into a small niche, where a slight little person like
+Miss Clifton was very well concealed from curious eyes.  Before the train
+came within the light from the lamps on the platform, she ensconced
+herself in this shelter.  No one but I could see her laughing face, as
+she stood there leaning cautiously forward with her finger pressed upon
+her rosy lips, peeping at the messenger who delivered into my own hands
+the Premier's despatch-box, while Tom Morville received the letter-bag of
+the great house.
+
+"See," I said, when we were again in motion, and she had emerged from her
+concealment, "this is the Premier's despatch-box, going back to the
+Secretary of State.  There are some state secrets for you, and ladies are
+fond of secrets."
+
+"Oh! I know nothing about politics," she answered, indifferently, "and we
+have had that box through our office a time or two."
+
+"Did you ever notice this mark upon it," I asked--"a heart with a dagger
+through it?" and bending down my face to hers, I added a certain spooney
+remark, which I do not care to repeat.  Miss Clifton tossed her little
+head, and pouted her lips; but she took the box out of my hands, and
+carried it to the lamp nearest the further end of the van, after which
+she put it down upon the counter close beside the screen, and I thought
+no more about it.  The midnight ride was entertaining in the extreme, for
+the girl was full of young life and sauciness and merry humour.  I can
+safely aver that I have never been to an evening's so-called
+entertainment which, to me, was half so enjoyable.  It added also to the
+zest and keen edge of the enjoyment to see her hasten to hide herself
+whenever I told her we were going to stop to take up the mails.
+
+"We had passed Watford, the last station at which we stopped, before I
+became alive to the recollection that our work was terribly behindhand.
+Miss Clifton also became grave, and sat at the end of the counter very
+quiet and subdued, as if her frolic were over, and it was possible she
+might find something to repent of in it.  I had told her we should stop
+no more until we reached Euston-square station, but to my surprise I felt
+our speed decreasing, and our train coming to a standstill.  I looked out
+and called to the guard in the van behind, who told me he supposed there
+was something on the line before us, and that we should go on in a minute
+or two.  I turned my head, and gave this information to my fellow-clerk
+and Miss Clifton.
+
+"Do you know where we are?" she asked, in a frightened tone.
+
+"At Camden-town," I replied.  She sprang hastily from her seat, and came
+towards me.
+
+"I am close to my friend's house here," she said, "so it is a lucky thing
+for me.  It is not five minutes' walk from the station.  I will say
+good-bye to you now, Mr. Wilcox, and I thank you a thousand times for
+your kindness."
+
+She seemed flurried, and she held out both her little hands to me in an
+appealing kind of way, as if she were afraid of my detaining her against
+her will.  I took them both into mine, pressing them with rather more
+ardour than was quite necessary.
+
+"I do not like you to go alone at this hour," I said, "but there is no
+help for it.  It has been a delightful time to me.  Will you allow me to
+call upon you to-morrow morning early, for I leave London at 10.30; or on
+Wednesday, when I shall be in town again?"
+
+"O," she answered, hanging her head, "I don't know.  I'll write and tell
+mamma how kind you have been, and, and--but I must go, Mr. Wilcox."
+
+"I don't like your going alone," I repeated.
+
+"O! I know the way perfectly," she said, in the same flurried manner,
+"perfectly, thank you.  And it is close at hand.  Goodbye."
+
+She jumped lightly out of the carriage, and the train started on again at
+the same instant.  We were busy enough, as you may suppose.  In five
+minutes more we should be in Euston-square, and there was nearly fifteen
+minutes work still to be done.  Spite of the enjoyment he had afforded
+me, I mentally anathematised Mr. Huntingdon and his departure from
+ordinary rules, and, thrusting Miss Clifton forcibly out of my thoughts,
+I set to work with a will, gathered up the registered letters for London,
+tied them into a bundle with the paper bill, and then turned to the
+corner of the counter for the despatch-box.
+
+You have guessed already my cursed misfortune.  The Premier's
+despatch-box was not there.  For the first minute or so I was in nowise
+alarmed, and merely looked round, upon the floor, under the bags, into
+the boxes, into any place into which it could have fallen or been
+deposited.  We reached Euston-square while I was still searching, and
+losing more and more of my composure every instant.  Tom Morville joined
+me in my quest, and felt every bag which had been made up and sealed.
+The box was no small article which could go into little compass; it was
+certainly twelve inches long, and more than that in girth.  But it turned
+up nowhere.  I never felt nearer fainting than at that moment.
+
+"Could Miss Clifton have carried it off?" suggested Tom Morville.
+
+"No," I said, indignantly but thoughtfully, "she couldn't have carried
+off such a bulky thing as that, without our seeing it.  It would not go
+into one of our pockets, Tom, and she wore a tight-fitting jacket that
+would not conceal anything."
+
+"No, she can't have it," assented Tom; "then it must be somewhere about."
+We searched again and again, turning over everything in the van, but
+without success.  The Premier's despatch-box was gone; and all we could
+do at first was to stand and stare at one another.  Our trance of blank
+dismay was of short duration, for the van was assailed by the postmen
+from St. Martin's-le-Grand, who were waiting for our charge.  In a stupor
+of bewilderment we completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then,
+once more we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of
+our seven senses.  All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we had had
+our usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter insignificance
+compared with this.  My eye fell upon Mr. Huntingdon's order lying among
+some scraps of waste paper on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it
+carefully, with its official envelope, into my pocket.
+
+"We can't stay here," said Tom.  The porters were looking in
+inquisitively; we were seldom so long in quitting oar empty van.
+
+"No," I replied, a sudden gleam of sense darting across the blank
+bewilderment of my brain; "no, we must go to head-quarters at once, and
+make a clean breast of it.  This is no private business, Tom."
+
+We made one more ineffectual search, and then we hailed a cab and drove
+as hard as we could to the General Post-office.  The secretary of the
+Post-office was not there, of course, but we obtained the address of his
+residence in one of the suburbs, four or five miles from the City, and we
+told no one of our misfortune, my idea being that the fewer who were made
+acquainted with the loss the better.  My judgment was in the right there.
+
+We had to knock up the household of the secretary--a formidable personage
+with whom I had never been brought into contact before--and in a short
+time we were holding a strictly private and confidential interview with
+him, by the glimmer of a solitary candle, just serving to light up his
+severe face, which changed its expression several times as I narrated the
+calamity.  It was too stupendous for rebuke, and I fancied his eyes
+softened with something like commiseration as he gazed upon us.  After a
+short interval of deliberation, he announced his intention of
+accompanying us to the residence of the Secretary of State; and in a few
+minutes we were driving back again to the opposite extremity of London.
+It was not far off the hour for the morning delivery of letters when we
+reached our destination; but the atmosphere was yellow with fog, and we
+could see nothing as we passed along in almost utter silence, for neither
+of us ventured to speak, and the secretary only made a brief remark now
+and then.  We drove up to some dwelling enveloped in fog, and we were
+left in the cab for nearly half an hour, while our secretary went in.  At
+the end of that time we were summoned to an apartment where there was
+seated at a large desk a small spare man, with a great head, and eyes
+deeply sunk under the brows.  There was no form of introduction, of
+course, and we could only guess who he might be; but we were requested to
+repeat our statement, and a few shrewd questions were put to us by the
+stranger.  We were eager to put him in possession of everything we knew,
+but that was little beyond the fact that the despatch-box was lost.
+
+"That young person must have taken it," he said.
+
+"She could not, sir," I answered, positively, but deferentially.  "She
+wore the tightest-fitting pelisse I ever saw, and she gave me both her
+hands when she said good-bye.  She could not possibly have it concealed
+about her.  It would not go into my pocket."
+
+"How did she come to travel up with you in the van, sir?" he asked
+severely.
+
+I gave him for answer the order signed by Mr. Huntingdon.  He and our
+secretary scanned it closely.
+
+"It is Huntingdon's signature without doubt," said the latter; "I could
+swear to it anywhere.  This is an extraordinary circumstance!"
+
+It was an extraordinary circumstance.  The two retired into an adjoining
+room, where they stayed for another half-hour, and when they returned to
+us their faces still bore an aspect of grave perplexity.
+
+"Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Morville," said our secretary, "it is expedient that
+this affair should be kept inviolably secret.  You must even be careful
+not to hint that you hold any secret.  You did well not to announce your
+loss at the Post-office, and I shall cause it to be understood that you
+had instructions to take the despatch-box direct to its destination.
+Your business now is to find the young woman, and return with her not
+later than six o'clock this afternoon to my office at the General
+Post-office.  What other steps we think it requisite to take, you need
+know nothing about; the less you know, the better for yourselves."
+
+Another gleam of commiseration in his official eye made our hearts sink
+within us.  We departed promptly, and, with that instinct of wisdom which
+at times dictates infallibly what course we should pursue, we decided our
+line of action.  Tom Morville was to go down to Camden-town, and inquire
+at every house for Miss Clifton, while I--there would be just time for
+it--was to run down to Eaton by train and obtain her exact address from
+her parents.  We agreed to meet at the General Post-office at half-past
+five, if I could possibly reach it by that time; but in any case Tom was
+to report himself to the secretary and account for my absence.
+
+When I arrived at the station at Eaton, I found that I had only
+forty-five minutes before the up train went by.  The town was nearly a
+mile away, but I made all the haste I could to reach it.  I was not
+surprised to find the post-office in connexion with a bookseller's shop,
+and I saw a pleasant elderly lady seated behind the counter, while a tall
+dark-haired girl was sitting at some work a little out of sight.  I
+introduced myself at once.
+
+"I am Frank Wilcox, of the railway post-office, and I have just run down
+to Eaton to obtain some information from you."
+
+"Certainly.  We know you well by name," was the reply, given in a cordial
+manner, which was particularly pleasant to me.
+
+"Will you be so good as give me the address of Miss Anne Clifton in
+Camden-town?" I said.
+
+"Miss Anne Clifton?" ejaculated the lady.
+
+"Yes.  Your daughter, I presume.  Who went up to London last night."
+
+"I have no daughter Anne," she said; "I am Anne Clifton, and my daughters
+are named Mary and Susan.  This is my daughter Mary."
+
+The tall dark-haired girl had left her seat, and now stood beside her
+mother.  Certainly she was very unlike the small golden-haired coquette
+who had travelled up to London with me as Anne Clifton.
+
+"Madam," I said, scarcely able to speak, "is your other daughter a
+slender little creature, exactly the reverse of this young lady?"
+
+"No," she answered, laughing; "Susan is both taller and darker than Mary.
+Call Susan, my dear."
+
+In a few seconds Miss Susan made her appearance, and I had the three
+before me--A. Clifton, S. Clifton, and M. Clifton.  There was no other
+girl in the family; and when I described the young lady who had travelled
+under their name, they could not think of any one in the town--it was a
+small one--who answered my description, or who had gone on a visit to
+London.  I had no time to spare, and I hurried back to the station, just
+catching the train as it left the platform.  At the appointed hour I met
+Morville at the General Post-office, and threading the long passages of
+the secretary's offices, we at length found ourselves anxiously waiting
+in an ante-room, until we were called into his presence.  Morville had
+discovered nothing, except that the porters and policemen at Camden-town
+station had seen a young lady pass out last night, attended by a swarthy
+man who looked like a foreigner, and carried a small black portmanteau.
+
+I scarcely know how long we waited; it might have been years, for I was
+conscious of an ever-increasing difficulty in commanding my thoughts, or
+fixing them upon the subject which had engrossed them all day.  I had not
+tasted food for twenty-four hours, nor closed my eyes for thirty-six,
+while, during the whole of the time, my nervous system had been on full
+strain.
+
+Presently, the summons came, and I was ushered, first, into the inner
+apartment.  There sat five gentlemen round a table, which was strewed
+with a number of documents.  There were the Secretary of State, whom we
+had seen in the morning, our secretary, and Mr. Huntingdon; the fourth
+was a fine-looking man, whom I afterwards knew to be the Premier; the
+fifth I recognised as our great chief, the Postmaster-General.  It was an
+august assemblage to me, and I bowed low; but my head was dizzy, and my
+throat parched.
+
+"Mr. Wilcox," said our secretary, "you will tell these gentlemen again,
+the circumstances of the loss you reported to me this morning."
+
+I laid my hand upon the back of a chair to steady myself, and went
+through the narration for the third time, passing over sundry remarks
+made by myself to the young lady.  That done, I added the account of my
+expedition to Eaton, and the certainty at which I had arrived that my
+fellow-traveller was not the person she represented herself to be.  After
+which, I inquired with indescribable anxiety if Mr. Huntingdon's order
+were a forgery?
+
+"I cannot tell, Mr. Wilcox," said that gentleman, taking the order into
+his hands, and regarding it with an air of extreme perplexity.  "I could
+have sworn it was mine, had it been attached to any other document.  I
+think Forbes's handwriting is not so well imitated.  But it is the very
+ink I use, and mine is a peculiar signature."
+
+It was a very peculiar and old-fashioned signature, with a flourish
+underneath it not unlike a whip-handle, with the lash caught round it in
+the middle; but that did not make it the more difficult to forge, as I
+humbly suggested.  Mr. Huntingdon wrote his name upon a paper, and two or
+three of the gentlemen tried to imitate the flourish, but vainly.  They
+gave it up with a smile upon their grave faces.
+
+"You have been careful not to let a hint of this matter drop from you,
+Mr. Wilcox?" said the Postmaster-General.
+
+"Not a syllable, my lord," I answered.
+
+"It is imperatively necessary that the secret should be kept.  You would
+be removed from the temptation of telling it, if you had an appointment
+in some office abroad.  The packet-agency at Alexandria is vacant, and I
+will have you appointed to it at once."
+
+It would be a good advance from my present situation, and would doubtless
+prove a stepping-stone to other and better appointments; but I had a
+mother living at Fazeley, bedridden and paralytic, who had no pleasure in
+existence except having me to dwell under the same roof with her.  My
+head was growing more and more dizzy, and a strange vagueness was
+creeping over me.
+
+"Gentlemen," I muttered, "I have a bedridden mother whom I cannot leave.
+I was not to blame, gentlemen."  I fancied there was a stir and movement
+at the table, but my eyes were dim, and in another second I had lost
+consciousness.
+
+When I came to myself, in two or three minutes, I found that Mr.
+Huntingdon was kneeling on the floor beside me, supporting my head, while
+our secretary held a glass of wine to my lips.  I rallied as quickly as
+possible, and staggered to my feet; but the two gentlemen placed me in
+the chair against which I had been leaning, and insisted upon my
+finishing the wine before I tried to speak.
+
+"I have not tasted food all day," I said, faintly.
+
+"Then, my good fellow, you shall go home immediately," said the
+Postmaster-General; "but be on your guard!  Not a word of this must
+escape you.  Are you a married man?"
+
+"No, my lord," I answered.
+
+"So much the better," he added, smiling.  "You can keep a secret from
+your mother, I dare say.  We rely upon your honour."
+
+The secretary then rang a bell, and I was committed to the charge of the
+messenger who answered it; and in a few minutes I was being conveyed in a
+cab to my London lodgings.  A week afterwards, Tom Morville was sent out
+to a post-office in Canada, where he settled down, married, and is still
+living, perfectly satisfied with his position, as he occasionally informs
+me by letter.  For myself, I remained as I desired, in my old post as
+travelling-clerk until the death of my mother, which occurred some ten or
+twelve months afterwards.  I was then promoted to an appointment as a
+clerk in charge, upon the first vacancy.
+
+The business of the clerks in charge is to take possession of any
+post-office in the kingdom, upon the death or resignation of the
+postmaster, or when circumstances of suspicion cause his suspension from
+office.  My new duties carried me three or four times into Mr.
+Huntingdon's district.  Though that gentleman and I never exchanged a
+word with regard to the mysterious loss in which we had both had an
+innocent share, he distinguished me with peculiar favour, and more than
+once invited me to visit him at his own house.  He lived alone, having
+but one daughter, who had married, somewhat against his will, one of his
+clerks: the Mr. Forbes whose handwriting had been so successfully
+imitated in the official order presented to me by the self-styled Miss
+Anne Clifton.  (By the way, I may here mention, though it has nothing to
+do with my story, that my acquaintance with the Cliftons had ripened into
+an intimacy, which resulted in my engagement and marriage to Mary.)
+
+It would be beside my purpose to specify the precise number of years
+which elapsed before I was once again summoned to the secretary's private
+apartment, where I found him closeted with Mr. Huntingdon.  Mr.
+Huntingdon shook hands with unofficial cordiality; and then the secretary
+proceeded to state the business on hand.
+
+"Mr. Wilcox, you remember our offer to place you in office in
+Alexandria?" he said.
+
+"Certainly, sir," I answered.
+
+"It has been a troublesome office," he continued, almost pettishly.  "We
+sent out Mr. Forbes only six months ago, on account of his health, which
+required a warmer climate, and now his medical man reports that his life
+is not worth three weeks' purchase."
+
+Upon Mr. Huntingdon's face there rested an expression of profound
+anxiety; and as the secretary paused he addressed himself to me.
+
+"Mr. Wilcox," he said, "I have been soliciting, as a personal favour,
+that you should be sent out to take charge of the packet-agency, in order
+that my daughter may have some one at hand to befriend her, and manage
+her business affairs for her.  You are not personally acquainted with
+her, but I know I can trust her with you."
+
+"You may, Mr. Huntingdon," I said, warmly.  "I will do anything I can to
+aid Mrs. Forbes.  When do you wish me to start?"
+
+"How soon can you be ready?" was the rejoinder.
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+I was not married then, and I anticipated no delay in setting off.  Nor
+was there any.  I travelled with the overland mail through France to
+Marseilles, embarked in a vessel for Alexandria, and in a few days from
+the time I first heard of my destination set foot in the office there.
+All the postal arrangements had fallen into considerable irregularity and
+confusion; for, as I was informed immediately on my arrival, Mr. Forbes
+had been in a dying condition for the last week, and of course the
+absence of a master had borne the usual results.  I took formal
+possession of the office, and then, conducted by one of the clerks, I
+proceeded to the dwelling of the unfortunate postmaster and his no less
+unfortunate wife.  It would be out of place in this narrative to indulge
+in any traveller's tales about the strange place where I was so
+unexpectedly located.  Suffice it to say, that the darkened sultry room
+into which I was shown, on inquiring for Mrs. Forbes, was bare of
+furniture, and destitute of all those little tokens of refinement and
+taste which make our English parlours so pleasant to the eye.  There was,
+however, a piano in one of the dark corners of the room, open, and with a
+sheet of music on it.  While I waited for Mrs. Forbes's appearance, I
+strolled idly up to the piano to see what music it might be.  The next
+moment my eye fell upon an antique red morocco workbox standing on the
+top of the piano--a workbox evidently, for the lid was not closely shut,
+and a few threads of silk and cotton were hanging out of it.  In a kind
+of dream--for it was difficult to believe that the occurrence was a
+fact--I carried the box to the darkened window, and there, plain in my
+sight, was the device scratched upon the leather: the revolutionary
+symbol of a heart with a dagger through it.  I had found the Premier's
+despatch-box in the parlour of the packet-agent of Alexandria!
+
+I stood for some minutes with that dream-like feeling upon me, gazing at
+the box in the dim obscure light.  It could _not_ be real!  My fancy must
+be playing a trick upon me!  But the sound of a light step--for, light as
+it was, I heard it distinctly as it approached the room--broke my trance,
+and I hastened to replace the box on the piano, and to stoop down as if
+examining the music before the door opened.  I had not sent in my name to
+Mrs. Forbes, for I did not suppose that she was acquainted with it, nor
+could she see me distinctly, as I stood in the gloom.  But I could see
+her.  She had the slight slender figure, the childlike face, and the fair
+hair of Miss Anne Clifton.  She came quickly across the room, holding out
+both her hands in a childish appealing manner.
+
+"O!" she wailed, in a tone that went straight to my heart, "he is dead!
+He has just died!"
+
+It was no time then to speak about the red morocco workbox.  This little
+childish creature, who did not look a day older than when I had last seen
+her in my travelling post-office, was a widow in a strange land, far away
+from any friend save myself.  I had brought her a letter from her father.
+The first duties that devolved upon me were those of her husband's
+interment, which had to take place immediately.  Three or four weeks
+elapsed before I could, with any humanity, enter upon the investigation
+of her mysterious complicity in the daring theft practised on the
+government and the post-office.
+
+I did not see the despatch-box again.  In the midst of her new and
+vehement grief, Mrs. Forbes had the precaution to remove it before I was
+ushered again into the room where I had discovered it.  I was at some
+trouble to hit upon any plan by which to gain a second sight of it; but I
+was resolved that Mrs. Forbes should not leave Alexandria without giving
+me a full explanation.  We were waiting for remittances and instructions
+from England, and in the meantime the violence of her grief abated, and
+she recovered a good share of her old buoyancy and loveliness, which had
+so delighted me on my first acquaintance with her.  As her demands upon
+my sympathy weakened, my curiosity grew stronger, and at last mastered
+me.  I carried with me a netted purse which required mending, and I asked
+her to catch up the broken meshes while I waited for it.
+
+"I will tell your maid to bring your workbox," I said, going to the door
+and calling the servant.  "Your mistress has a red morocco workbox," I
+said to her, as she answered my summons.
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"In her bedroom," she said.
+
+"Mrs. Forbes wishes it brought here."  I turned back into the room.  Mrs.
+Forbes had gone deadly pale, but her eyes looked sullen, and her teeth
+were clenched under her lips with an expression of stubbornness.  The
+maid brought the workbox.  I walked, with it in my hands, up to the sofa
+where she was seated.
+
+"You remember this mark?" I asked; "I think neither of us can ever forget
+it."
+
+She did not answer by word, but there was a very intelligent gleam in her
+blue eyes.
+
+"Now," I continued, softly, "I promised your father to befriend you, and
+I am not a man to forget a promise.  But you must tell me the whole
+simple truth."
+
+I was compelled to reason with her, and to urge her for some time.  I
+confess I went so far as to remind her that there was an English consul
+at Alexandria, to whom I could resort.  At last she opened her stubborn
+lips, and the whole story came out, mingled with sobs and showers of
+tears.
+
+She had been in love with Alfred, she said, and they were too poor to
+marry, and papa would not hear of such a thing.  She was always in want
+of money, she was kept so short; and they promised to give her such a
+great sum--a vast sum--five hundred pounds.
+
+"But who bribed you?" I inquired.
+
+A foreign gentleman whom she had met in London, called Monsieur Bonnard.
+It was a French name, but she was not sure that he was a Frenchman.  He
+talked to her about her father being a surveyor in the post-office, and
+asked her a great number of questions.  A few weeks after, she met him in
+their own town by accident, she and Mr. Forbes; and Alfred had a long
+private talk with him, and they came to her, and told her she could help
+them very much.  They asked her if she could be brave enough to carry off
+a little red box out of the travelling post-office, containing nothing
+but papers.  After a while she consented.  When she had confessed so much
+under compulsion, Mrs. Forbes seemed to take a pleasure in the narrative,
+and went on fluently.
+
+"We required papa's signature to the order, and we did not know how to
+get it.  Luckily he had a fit of the gout, and was very peevish; and I
+had to read over a lot of official papers to him, and then he signed
+them.  One of the papers I read twice, and slipped the order into its
+place after the second reading.  I thought I should have died with
+fright; but just then he was in great pain, and glad to get his work
+over.  I made an excuse that I was going to visit my aunt at Beckby, but
+instead of going there direct, we contrived to be at the station at Eaton
+a minute or two before the mail train came up.  I kept outside the
+station door till we heard the whistle, and just then the postman came
+running down the road, and I followed him straight through the
+booking-office, and asked him to give you the order, which I put into his
+hand.  He scarcely saw me.  I just caught a glimpse of Monsieur Bonnard's
+face through the window of the compartment next the van, when Alfred had
+gone.  They had promised me that the train should stop at Camden-town, if
+I could only keep your attention engaged until then.  You know how I
+succeeded."
+
+"But how did you dispose of the box?" I asked.  "You could not have
+concealed it about you; that I am sure of."
+
+"Ah!" she said, "nothing was easier.  Monsieur Bonnard had described the
+van to me, and you remember I put the box down at the end of the counter,
+close to the corner where I hid myself at every station.  There was a
+door with a window in it, and I asked if I might have the window open, as
+the van was too warm for me.  I believe Monsieur Bonnard could have taken
+it from me by only leaning through his window, but he preferred stepping
+out, and taking it from my hand, just as the train was leaving
+Watford--on the far side of the carriages, you understand.  It was the
+last station, and the train came to a stand at Camden-town.  After all,
+the box was not out of your sight more than twenty minutes before you
+missed it.  Monsieur Bonnard and I hurried out of the station, and Alfred
+followed us.  The box was forced open--the lock has never been mended,
+for it was a peculiar one--and Monsieur Bonnard took possession of the
+papers.  He left the box with me, after putting inside it a roll of
+notes.  Alfred and I were married next morning, and I went back to my
+aunt's; but we did not tell papa of our marriage for three or four
+months.  That is the story of my red morocco workbox."
+
+She smiled with the provoking mirthfulness of a mischievous child.  There
+was one point still, on which my curiosity was unsatisfied.
+
+"Did you know what the despatches were about?" I asked.
+
+"O no!" she answered; "I never understood politics in the least.  I knew
+nothing about them.  Monsieur did not say a word; he did not even look at
+the papers while we were by.  I would never, never, have taken a
+registered letter, or anything with money in it, you know.  But all those
+papers could be written again quite easily.  You must not think me a
+thief, Mr. Wilcox; there was nothing worth money among the papers."
+
+"They were worth five hundred pounds to you," I said.  "Did you ever see
+Bonnard again?"
+
+"Never again," she replied.  "He said he was going to return to his
+native country.  I don't think Bonnard was his real name."
+
+Most likely not, I thought; but I said no more to Mrs. Forbes.  Once
+again I was involved in a great perplexity about this affair.  It was
+clearly my duty to report the discovery at head-quarters, but I shrank
+from doing so.  One of the chief culprits was already gone to another
+judgment than that of man; several years had obliterated all traces of
+Monsieur Bonnard; and the only victim of justice would be this poor
+little dupe of the two greater criminals.  At last I came to the
+conclusion to send the whole of the particulars to Mr. Huntingdon
+himself; and I wrote them to him, without remark or comment.
+
+The answer that came to Mrs. Forbes and me in Alexandria was the
+announcement of Mr. Huntingdon's sudden death of some disease of the
+heart, on the day which I calculated would put him in possession of my
+communication.  Mrs. Forbes was again overwhelmed with apparently
+heartrending sorrow and remorse.  The income left to her was something
+less than one hundred pounds a year.  The secretary of the post-office,
+who had been a personal friend of the deceased gentleman, was his sole
+executor; and I received a letter from him, containing one for Mrs.
+Forbes, which recommended her, in terms not to be misunderstood, to fix
+upon some residence abroad, and not to return to England.  She fancied
+she would like the seclusion and quiet of a convent; and I made
+arrangements for her to enter one in Malta, where she would still be
+under British protection.  I left Alexandria myself on the arrival of
+another packet-agent; and on my return to London I had a private
+interview with the secretary.  I found that there was no need to inform
+him of the circumstances I have related to you, as he had taken
+possession of all Mr. Huntingdon's papers.  In consideration of his
+ancient friendship, and of the escape of those who most merited
+punishment, he had come to the conclusion that it was quite as well to
+let bygones be bygones.
+
+At the conclusion of the interview I delivered a message which Mrs.
+Forbes had emphatically entrusted to me.
+
+"Mrs. Forbes wished me to impress upon your mind," I said, "that neither
+she nor Mr. Forbes would have been guilty of this misdemeanour if they
+had not been very much in love with one another, and very much in want of
+money."
+
+"Ah!" replied the secretary, with a smile, "if Cleopatra's nose had been
+shorter, the fate of the world would have been different!"
+
+
+
+
+NO. 5 BRANCH LINE
+THE ENGINEER
+
+
+His name, sir, was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin Hardy.  We were born
+within a few days of each other; bred up in the same village; taught at
+the same school.  I cannot remember the time when we were not close
+friends.  Even as boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel.  We had not
+a thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common.  We would
+have stood by each other, fearlessly, to the death.  It was such a
+friendship as one reads about sometimes in books: fast and firm as the
+great Tors upon our native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.
+
+The name of our village was Chadleigh.  Lifted high above the pasture
+flats which stretched away at our feet like a measureless green lake and
+melted into mist on the furthest horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built
+hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the
+plateau.  Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread
+the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here
+and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned
+highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary,
+and older than the deluge.  These were the Tors--Druids' Tor, King's Tor,
+Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient
+time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of
+bloody heathen rites were performed.  Bones, too, had been found there,
+and arrow-heads, and ornaments of gold and glass.  I had a vague awe of
+the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone near them after
+dark for the heaviest bribe.
+
+I have said that we were born in the same village.  He was the son of a
+small farmer, named William Price, and the eldest of a family of seven; I
+was the only child of Ephraim Hardy, the Chadleigh blacksmith--a
+well-known man in those parts, whose memory is not forgotten to this day.
+Just so far as a farmer is supposed to be a bigger man than a blacksmith,
+Mat's father might be said to have a better standing than mine; but
+William Price, with his small holding and his seven boys, was, in fact,
+as poor as many a day-labourer; whilst the blacksmith, well-to-do,
+bustling, popular, and open-handed, was a person of some importance in
+the place.  All this, however, had nothing to do with Mat and myself.  It
+never occurred to either of us that his jacket was out at elbows, or that
+our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket.  It was enough for us
+that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same
+primer, fought each other's battles, screened each other's faults,
+fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds' nests together,
+and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, in each other's society.
+It was a happy time; but it could not go on for ever.  My father, being
+prosperous, resolved to put me forward in the world.  I must know more,
+and do better, than himself.  The forge was not good enough, the little
+world of Chadleigh not wide enough, for me.  Thus it happened that I was
+still swinging the satchel when Mat was whistling at the plough, and that
+at last, when my future course was shaped out, we were separated, as it
+then seemed to us, for life.  For, blacksmith's son as I was, furnace and
+forge, in some form or other, pleased me best, and I chose to be a
+working engineer.  So my father by-and-by apprenticed me to a Birmingham
+iron-master; and, having bidden farewell to Mat, and Chadleigh, and the
+grey old Tors in the shadow of which I had spent all the days of my life,
+I turned my face northward, and went over into "the Black Country."
+
+I am not going to dwell on this part of my story.  How I worked out the
+term of my apprenticeship; how, when I had served my full time and become
+a skilled workman, I took Mat from the plough and brought him over to the
+Black Country, sharing with him lodging, wages, experience--all, in
+short, that I had to give; how he, naturally quick to learn and brimful
+of quiet energy, worked his way up a step at a time, and came by-and-by
+to be a "first hand" in his own department; how, during all these years
+of change, and trial, and effort, the old boyish affection never wavered
+or weakened, but went on, growing with our growth and strengthening with
+our strength--are facts which I need do no more than outline in this
+place.
+
+About this time--it will be remembered that I speak of the days when Mat
+and I were on the bright side of thirty--it happened that our firm
+contracted to supply six first-class locomotives to run on the new line,
+then in process of construction, between Turin and Genoa.  It was the
+first Italian order we had taken.  We had had dealings with France,
+Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy.  The connexion,
+therefore, was new and valuable--all the more valuable because our
+Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun to lay down the iron roads,
+and would be safe to need more of our good English work as they went on.
+So the Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will,
+lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh hands,
+and determined, if energy and promptitude could do it, to place
+themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and stay there.
+They deserved and achieved success.  The six locomotives were not only
+turned out to time, but were shipped, despatched, and delivered with a
+promptitude that fairly amazed our Piedmontese consignee.  I was not a
+little proud, you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to
+superintend the transport of the engines.  Being allowed a couple of
+assistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus we
+enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.
+
+It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh from the
+Black Country.  The fairy city, with its crescent background of Alps; the
+port crowded with strange shipping; the marvellous blue sky and bluer
+sea; the painted houses on the quays; the quaint cathedral, faced with
+black and white marble; the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights'
+bazaar; the street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its
+fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the
+galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars;
+the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the
+singular lightness and brightness of the climate--made, altogether, such
+a combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind
+of bewildered dream, like children at a fair.  Before that week was
+ended, being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of the
+pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa Railway
+Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham for ever.
+
+Then began a new life--a life so active and healthy, so steeped in fresh
+air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled how we could have endured
+the gloom of the Black Country.  We were constantly up and down the line:
+now at Genoa, now at Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and
+placing our old experiences at the service of our new employers.
+
+In the meanwhile we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a couple of
+rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to the quays.  Such a
+busy little street--so steep and winding that no vehicles could pass
+through it, and so narrow that the sky looked like a mere strip of
+deep-blue ribbon overhead!  Every house in it, however, was a shop, where
+the goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or
+hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from dawn to
+dusk, an incessant stream of passers-by poured up and down between the
+port and the upper quarter of the city.
+
+Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by the sale of
+filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and toys in ivory and
+jet.  She had an only daughter named Gianetta, who served in the shop,
+and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld.  Looking back
+across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I
+can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to
+detect a flaw in her beauty.  I do not attempt to describe her.  I do not
+believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I
+once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but
+still like her), and, for aught I know, that picture is still hanging
+where I last looked at it--upon the walls of the Louvre.  It represented
+a woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder into a
+circular mirror held by a bearded man in the background.  In this man, as
+I then understood, the artist had painted his own portrait; in her, the
+portrait of the woman he loved.  No picture that I ever saw was half so
+beautiful, and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with
+Gianetta Coneglia.
+
+You may be certain the widow's shop did not want for customers.  All
+Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen behind that dingy little
+counter; and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared
+to remember, even by name.  Gentle and simple, rich and poor, from the
+red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to the nobleman
+carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the window, she treated them
+all alike--encouraged them, laughed at them, led them on and turned them
+off at her pleasure.  She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat
+and I discovered by-and-by, to our bitter cost.
+
+I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led me to
+suspect how things were going with us both; but long before the waning of
+that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my friend and myself.  It
+was nothing that could have been put into words.  It was nothing that
+either of us could have explained or justified, to save his life.  We
+lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we
+even took our long evening's walk together, when the day's labour was
+ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere
+looker-on could have detected a shadow of change.  Yet there it was,
+silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us every day.
+
+It was not his fault.  He was too true and gentle-hearted to have
+willingly brought about such a state of things between us.  Neither do I
+believe--fiery as my nature is--that it was mine.  It was all hers--hers
+from first to last--the sin, and the shame, and the sorrow.
+
+If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, no real
+harm could have come of it.  I would have put any constraint upon myself,
+and, Heaven knows! have borne any suffering, to see Mat really happy.  I
+know that he would have done the same, and more if he could, for me.  But
+Gianetta cared not one sou for either.  She never meant to choose between
+us.  It gratified her vanity to divide us; it amused her to play with us.
+It would pass my power to tell how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of
+coquetry--by the lingering of a glance, the substitution of a word, the
+flitting of a smile--she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our
+hearts, and lead us on to love her.  She deceived us both.  She buoyed us
+both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with
+despair.  For my part, when I seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the
+ruin that was about our path and I saw how the truest friendship that
+ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked
+myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me
+and I to him.  But this was not often.  I was readier to shut my eyes
+upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, wilfully, in a dream.
+
+Thus the autumn passed away, and winter came--the strange, treacherous,
+Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and
+bitter with storm.  Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface,
+Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba.  Still Gianetta
+held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty.  At length
+there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible misery and
+suspense of it no longer.  The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I
+knew my sentence.  She must choose between us.  She must either take me
+or let me go.  I was reckless.  I was desperate.  I was determined to
+know the worst, or the best.  If the worst, I would at once turn my back
+upon Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past life,
+and begin the world anew.  This I told her, passionately and sternly,
+standing before her in the little parlour at the back of the shop, one
+bleak December morning.
+
+"If it's Mat whom you care for most," I said, "tell me so in one word,
+and I will never trouble you again.  He is better worth your love.  I am
+jealous and exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman.  Speak,
+Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or am I to write
+home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to God to bless the woman
+who has promised to be my wife?"
+
+"You plead your friend's cause well," she replied, haughtily.  "Matteo
+ought to be grateful.  This is more than he ever did for you."
+
+"Give me my answer, for pity's sake," I exclaimed, "and let me go!"
+
+"You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese," she replied.  "I am not
+your jailor."
+
+"Do you bid me leave you?"
+
+"Beata Madre! not I."
+
+"Will you marry me, if I stay?"
+
+She laughed aloud--such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, like a chime of
+silver bells!
+
+"You ask too much," she said.
+
+"Only what you have led me to hope these five or six months past!"
+
+"That is just what Matteo says.  How tiresome you both are!"
+
+"O, Gianetta," I said, passionately, "be serious for one moment!  I am a
+rough fellow, it is true--not half good enough or clever enough for you;
+but I love you with my whole heart, and an Emperor could do no more."
+
+"I am glad of it," she replied; "I do not want you to love me less."
+
+"Then you cannot wish to make me wretched!  Will you promise me?"
+
+"I promise nothing," said she, with another burst of laughter; "except
+that I will not marry Matteo!"
+
+Except that she would not marry Matteo!  Only that.  Not a word of hope
+for myself.  Nothing but my friend's condemnation.  I might get comfort,
+and selfish triumph, and some sort of base assurance out of that, if I
+could.  And so, to my shame, I did.  I grasped at the vain encouragement,
+and, fool that I was! let her put me off again unanswered.  From that
+day, I gave up all effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly
+on--to destruction.
+
+At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it seemed as
+if an open rupture must be at hand.  We avoided each other, scarcely
+exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and fell away from all our old
+familiar habits.  At this time--I shudder to remember it!--there were
+moments when I felt that I hated him.
+
+Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day by day,
+another month or five weeks went by; and February came; and, with
+February, the Carnival.  They said in Genoa that it was a particularly
+dull carnival; and so it must have been; for, save a flag or two hung out
+in some of the principal streets, and a sort of festa look about the
+women, there were no special indications of the season.  It was, I think,
+the second day when, having been on the line all the morning, I returned
+to Genoa at dusk, and, to my surprise, found Mat Price on the platform.
+He came up to me, and laid his hand on my arm.
+
+"You are in late," he said.  "I have been waiting for you three-quarters
+of an hour.  Shall we dine together to-day?"
+
+Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at once called up
+my better feelings.
+
+"With all my heart, Mat," I replied; "shall we go to Gozzoli's?"
+
+"No, no," he said, hurriedly.  "Some quieter place--some place where we
+can talk.  I have something to say to you."
+
+I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy sense of
+apprehension stole upon me.  We decided on the "Pescatore," a little
+out-of-the-way trattoria, down near the Molo Vecchio.  There, in a dingy
+salon, frequented chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered
+our simple dinner.  Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel; but, calling
+presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.
+
+"Well, Mat," I said, as the last dish was placed on the table, "what news
+have you?"
+
+"Bad."
+
+"I guessed that from your face."
+
+"Bad for you--bad for me.  Gianetta."
+
+"What of Gianetta?"
+
+He passed his hand nervously across his lips.
+
+"Gianetta is false--worse than false," he said, in a hoarse voice.  "She
+values an honest man's heart just as she values a flower for her
+hair--wears it for a day, then throws it aside for ever.  She has cruelly
+wronged us both."
+
+"In what way?  Good Heavens, speak out!"
+
+"In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love her.  She has
+sold herself to the Marchese Loredano."
+
+The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning torrent.  I could
+scarcely see, and dared not trust myself to speak.
+
+"I saw her going towards the cathedral," he went on, hurriedly.  "It was
+about three hours ago.  I thought she might be going to confession, so I
+hung back and followed her at a distance.  When she got inside, however,
+she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this man was waiting
+for her.  You remember him--an old man who used to haunt the shop a month
+or two back.  Well, seeing how deep in conversation they were, and how
+they stood close under the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I
+fell into a passion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to
+say or do something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to draw
+her arm through mine, and take her home.  When I came within a few feet,
+however, and found only a big pillar between myself and them, I paused.
+They could not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their voices
+distinctly, and--and I listened."
+
+"Well, and you heard--"
+
+"The terms of a shameful bargain--beauty on the one side, gold on the
+other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples--Pah! it makes
+me sick to repeat it."
+
+And, with a shudder, he poured out another glass of wine and drank it at
+a draught.
+
+"After that," he said, presently, "I made no effort to bring her away.
+The whole thing was so cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful, that I
+felt I had only to wipe her out of my memory, and leave her to her fate.
+I stole out of the cathedral, and walked about here by the sea for ever
+so long, trying to get my thoughts straight.  Then I remembered you, Ben;
+and the recollection of how this wanton had come between us and broken up
+our lives drove me wild.  So I went up to the station and waited for you.
+I felt you ought to know it all; and--and I thought, perhaps, that we
+might go back to England together."
+
+"The Marchese Loredano!"
+
+It was all that I could say; all that I could think.  As Mat had just
+said of himself, I felt "like one stunned."
+
+"There is one other thing I may as well tell you," he added, reluctantly,
+"if only to show you how false a woman can be.  We--we were to have been
+married next month."
+
+"_We_?  Who?  What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that we were to have been married--Gianetta and I."
+
+A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of incredulity, swept over me at this,
+and seemed to carry my senses away.
+
+"_You_!" I cried.  "Gianetta marry you!  I don't believe it."
+
+"I wish I had not believed it," he replied, looking up as if puzzled by
+my vehemence.  "But she promised me; and I thought, when she promised it,
+she meant it."
+
+"She told me, weeks ago, that she would never be your wife!"
+
+His colour rose, his brow darkened; when his answer came, it was as calm
+as the last.
+
+"Indeed!" he said.  "Then it is only one baseness more.  She told me that
+she had refused you; and that was why we kept our engagement secret."
+
+"Tell the truth, Mat Price," I said, well-nigh beside myself with
+suspicion.  "Confess that every word of this is false!  Confess that
+Gianetta will not listen to you, and that you are afraid I may succeed
+where you have failed.  As perhaps I shall--as perhaps I shall, after
+all!"
+
+"Are you mad?" he exclaimed.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"That I believe it's just a trick to get me away to England--that I don't
+credit a syllable of your story.  You're a liar, and I hate you!"
+
+He rose, and, laying one hand on the back of his chair, looked me sternly
+in the face.
+
+"If you were not Benjamin Hardy," he said, deliberately, "I would thrash
+you within an inch of your life."
+
+The words had no sooner passed his lips than I sprang at him.  I have
+never been able distinctly to remember what followed.  A curse--a blow--a
+struggle--a moment of blind fury--a cry--a confusion of tongues--a circle
+of strange faces.  Then I see Mat lying back in the arms of a bystander;
+myself trembling and bewildered--the knife dropping from my grasp; blood
+upon the floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his shirt.  And then I
+hear those dreadful words:
+
+"O, Ben, you have murdered me!"
+
+He did not die--at least, not there and then.  He was carried to the
+nearest hospital, and lay for some weeks between life and death.  His
+case, they said, was difficult and dangerous.  The knife had gone in just
+below the collarbone, and pierced down into the lungs.  He was not
+allowed to speak or turn--scarcely to breathe with freedom.  He might not
+even lift his head to drink.  I sat by him day and night all through that
+sorrowful time.  I gave up my situation on the railway; I quitted my
+lodging in the Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget that such a woman as
+Gianetta Coneglia had ever drawn breath.  I lived only for Mat; and he
+tried to live more, I believe, for my sake than his own.  Thus, in the
+bitter silent hours of pain and penitence, when no hand but mine
+approached his lips or smoothed his pillow, the old friendship came back
+with even more than its old trust and faithfulness.  He forgave me, fully
+and freely; and I would thankfully have given my life for him.
+
+At length there came one bright spring morning, when, dismissed as
+convalescent, he tottered out through the hospital gates, leaning on my
+arm, and feeble as an infant.  He was not cured; neither, as I then
+learned to my horror and anguish, was it possible that he ever could be
+cured.  He might live, with care, for some years; but the lungs were
+injured beyond hope of remedy, and a strong or healthy man he could never
+be again.  These, spoken aside to me, were the parting words of the chief
+physician, who advised me to take him further south without delay.
+
+I took him to a little coast-town called Rocca, some thirty miles beyond
+Genoa--a sheltered lonely place along the Riviera, where the sea was even
+bluer than the sky, and the cliffs were green with strange tropical
+plants, cacti, and aloes, and Egyptian palms.  Here we lodged in the
+house of a small tradesman; and Mat, to use his own words, "set to work
+at getting well in good earnest."  But, alas! it was a work which no
+earnestness could forward.  Day after day he went down to the beach, and
+sat for hours drinking the sea air and watching the sails that came and
+went in the offing.  By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of
+the house in which we lived.  A little later, and he spent his days on a
+couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for the end.  Ay, for the
+end!  It had come to that.  He was fading fast, waning with the waning
+summer, and conscious that the Reaper was at hand.  His whole aim now was
+to soften the agony of my remorse, and prepare me for what must shortly
+come.
+
+"I would not live longer, if I could," he said, lying on his couch one
+summer evening, and looking up to the stars.  "If I had my choice at this
+moment, I would ask to go.  I should like Gianetta to know that I forgave
+her."
+
+"She shall know it," I said, trembling suddenly from head to foot.
+
+He pressed my hand.
+
+"And you'll write to father?"
+
+"I will."
+
+I had drawn a little back, that he might not see the tears raining down
+my cheeks; but he raised himself on his elbow, and looked round.
+
+"Don't fret, Ben," he whispered; laid his head back wearily upon the
+pillow--and so died.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+And this was the end of it.  This was the end of all that made life life
+to me.  I buried him there, in hearing of the wash of a strange sea on a
+strange shore.  I stayed by the grave till the priest and the bystanders
+were gone.  I saw the earth filled in to the last sod, and the
+gravedigger stamp it down with his feet.  Then, and not till then, I felt
+that I had lost him for ever--the friend I had loved, and hated, and
+slain.  Then, and not till then, I knew that all rest, and joy, and hope
+were over for me.  From that moment my heart hardened within me, and my
+life was filled with loathing.  Day and night, land and sea, labour and
+rest, food and sleep, were alike hateful to me.  It was the curse of
+Cain, and that my brother had pardoned me made it lie none the lighter.
+Peace on earth was for me no more, and goodwill towards men was dead in
+my heart for ever.  Remorse softens some natures; but it poisoned mine.
+I hated all mankind; but above all mankind I hated the woman who had come
+between us two, and ruined both our lives.
+
+He had bidden me seek her out, and be the messenger of his forgiveness.
+I had sooner have gone down to the port of Genoa and taken upon me the
+serge cap and shotted chain of any galley-slave at his toil in the public
+works; but for all that I did my best to obey him.  I went back, alone
+and on foot.  I went back, intending to say to her, "Gianetta Coneglia,
+he forgave you; but God never will."  But she was gone.  The little shop
+was let to a fresh occupant; and the neighbours only knew that mother and
+daughter had left the place quite suddenly, and that Gianetta was
+supposed to be under the "protection" of the Marchese Loredano.  How I
+made inquiries here and there--how I heard that they had gone to
+Naples--and how, being restless and reckless of my time, I worked my
+passage in a French steamer, and followed her--how, having found the
+sumptuous villa that was now hers, I learned that she had left there some
+ten days and gone to Paris, where the Marchese was ambassador for the Two
+Sicilies--how, working my passage back again to Marseilles, and thence,
+in part by the river and in part by the rail, I made my way to
+Paris--how, day after day, I paced the streets and the parks, watched at
+the ambassador's gates, followed his carriage, and at last, after weeks
+of waiting, discovered her address--how, having written to request an
+interview, her servants spurned me from her door and flung my letter in
+my face--how, looking up at her windows, I then, instead of forgiving,
+solemnly cursed her with the bitterest curses my tongue could devise--and
+how, this done, I shook the dust of Paris from my feet, and became a
+wanderer upon the face of the earth, are facts which I have now no space
+to tell.
+
+The next six or eight years of my life were shifting and unsettled
+enough.  A morose and restless man, I took employment here and there, as
+opportunity offered, turning my hand to many things, and caring little
+what I earned, so long as the work was hard and the change incessant.
+First of all I engaged myself as chief engineer in one of the French
+steamers plying between Marseilles and Constantinople.  At Constantinople
+I changed to one of the Austrian Lloyd's boats, and worked for some time
+to and from Alexandria, Jaffa, and those parts.  After that, I fell in
+with a party of Mr. Layard's men at Cairo, and so went up the Nile and
+took a turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud.  Then I became a
+working engineer on the new desert line between Alexandria and Suez; and
+by-and-by I worked my passage out to Bombay, and took service as an
+engine fitter on one of the great Indian railways.  I stayed a long time
+in India; that is to say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long
+time for me; and I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that
+was declared just then with Russia.  That tempted me.  For I loved danger
+and hardship as other men love safety and ease; and as for my life, I had
+sooner have parted from it than kept it, any day.  So I came straight
+back to England; betook myself to Portsmouth, where my testimonials at
+once procured me the sort of berth I wanted.  I went out to the Crimea in
+the engine-room of one of her Majesty's war steamers.
+
+I served with the fleet, of course, while the war lasted; and when it was
+over, went wandering off again, rejoicing in my liberty.  This time I
+went to Canada, and after working on a railway then in progress near the
+American frontier, I presently passed over into the States; journeyed
+from north to south; crossed the Rocky Mountains; tried a month or two of
+life in the gold country; and then, being seized with a sudden, aching,
+unaccountable longing to revisit that solitary grave so far away on the
+Italian coast, I turned my face once more towards Europe.
+
+Poor little grave!  I found it rank with weeds, the cross half shattered,
+the inscription half effaced.  It was as if no one had loved him, or
+remembered him.  I went back to the house in which we had lodged
+together.  The same people were still living there, and made me kindly
+welcome.  I stayed with them for some weeks.  I weeded, and planted, and
+trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in pure
+white marble.  It was the first season of rest that I had known since I
+laid him there; and when at last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth
+again to battle with the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I
+would creep back to Rocca, when my days drew near to ending, and be
+buried by his side.
+
+From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than formerly for very
+distant parts, and willing to keep within reach of that grave, I went no
+further than Mantua, where I engaged myself as an engine-driver on the
+line, then not long completed, between that city and Venice.  Somehow,
+although I had been trained to the working engineering, I preferred in
+these days to earn my bread by driving.  I liked the excitement of it,
+the sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the
+flitting of the landscape.  Above all, I enjoyed to drive a night
+express.  The worse the weather, the better it suited with my sullen
+temper.  For I was as hard, and harder than ever.  The years had done
+nothing to soften me.  They had only confirmed all that was blackest and
+bitterest in my heart.
+
+I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been working on
+it steadily for more than seven months when that which I am now about to
+relate took place.
+
+It was in the month of March.  The weather had been unsettled for some
+days past, and the nights stormy; and at one point along the line, near
+Ponte di Brenta, the waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards
+of embankment.  Since this accident, the trains had all been obliged to
+stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di Brenta, and the
+passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be transported in all kinds
+of vehicles, by a circuitous country road, to the nearest station on the
+other side of the gap, where another train and engine awaited them.
+This, of course, caused great confusion and annoyance, put all our
+time-tables wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of
+inconvenience.  In the meanwhile an army of navvies was drafted to the
+spot, and worked day and night to repair the damage.  At this time I was
+driving two through trains each day; namely, one from Mantua to Venice in
+the early morning, and a return train from Venice to Mantua in the
+afternoon--a tolerably full day's work, covering about one hundred and
+ninety miles of ground, and occupying between ten and eleven hours.  I
+was therefore not best pleased when, on the third or fourth day after the
+accident, I was informed that, in addition to my regular allowance of
+work, I should that evening be required to drive a special train to
+Venice.  This special train, consisting of an engine, a single carriage,
+and a break-van, was to leave the Mantua platform at eleven; at Padua the
+passengers were to alight and find post-chaises waiting to convey them to
+Ponte di Brenta; at Ponte di Brenta another engine, carriage, and
+break-van were to be in readiness.  I was charged to accompany them
+throughout.
+
+"Corpo di Bacco," said the clerk who gave me my orders, "you need not
+look so black, man.  You are certain of a handsome gratuity.  Do you know
+who goes with you?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Not you, indeed!  Why, it's the Duca Loredano, the Neapolitan
+ambassador."
+
+"Loredano!" I stammered.  "What Loredano?  There was a Marchese--"
+
+"Certo.  He was the Marchese Loredano some years ago; but he has come
+into his dukedom since then."
+
+"He must be a very old man by this time."
+
+"Yes, he is old; but what of that?  He is as hale, and bright, and
+stately as ever.  You have seen him before?"
+
+"Yes," I said, turning away; "I have seen him--years ago."
+
+"You have heard of his marriage?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+The clerk chuckled, rubbed his hands, and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"An extraordinary affair," he said.  "Made a tremendous esclandre at the
+time.  He married his mistress--quite a common, vulgar girl--a
+Genoese--very handsome; but not received, of course.  Nobody visits her."
+
+"Married her!" I exclaimed.  "Impossible."
+
+"True, I assure you."
+
+I put my hand to my head.  I felt as if I had had a fall or a blow.
+
+"Does she--does she go to-night?" I faltered.
+
+"O dear, yes--goes everywhere with him--never lets him out of her sight.
+You'll see her--la bella Duchessa!"
+
+With this my informant laughed, and rubbed his hands again, and went back
+to his office.
+
+The day went by, I scarcely know how, except that my whole soul was in a
+tumult of rage and bitterness.  I returned from my afternoon's work about
+7.25, and at 10.30 I was once again at the station.  I had examined the
+engine; given instructions to the Fochista, or stoker, about the fire;
+seen to the supply of oil; and got all in readiness, when, just as I was
+about to compare my watch with the clock in the ticket-office, a hand was
+laid upon my arm, and a voice in my ear said:
+
+"Are you the engine-driver who is going on with this special train?"
+
+I had never seen the speaker before.  He was a small, dark man, muffled
+up about the throat, with blue glasses, a large black beard, and his hat
+drawn low upon his eyes.
+
+"You are a poor man, I suppose," he said, in a quick, eager whisper,
+"and, like other poor men, would not object to be better off.  Would you
+like to earn a couple of thousand florins?"
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Hush!  You are to stop at Padua, are you not, and to go on again at
+Ponte di Brenta?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Suppose you did nothing of the kind.  Suppose, instead of turning off
+the steam, you jump off the engine, and let the train run on?"
+
+"Impossible.  There are seventy yards of embankment gone, and--"
+
+"Basta!  I know that.  Save yourself, and let the train run on.  It would
+be nothing but an accident."
+
+I turned hot and cold; I trembled; my heart beat fast, and my breath
+failed.
+
+"Why do you tempt me?" I faltered.
+
+"For Italy's sake," he whispered; "for liberty's sake.  I know you are no
+Italian; but, for all that, you may be a friend.  This Loredano is one of
+his country's bitterest enemies.  Stay, here are the two thousand
+florins."
+
+I thrust his hand back fiercely.
+
+"No--no," I said.  "No blood-money.  If I do it, I do it neither for
+Italy nor for money; but for vengeance."
+
+"For vengeance!" he repeated.
+
+At this moment the signal was given for backing up to the platform.  I
+sprang to my place upon the engine without another word.  When I again
+looked towards the spot where he had been standing, the stranger was
+gone.
+
+I saw them take their places--Duke and Duchess, secretary and priest,
+valet and maid.  I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and
+stand, bareheaded, beside the door.  I could not distinguish their faces;
+the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong;
+but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head.  Had I
+not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone.
+Then the guard's whistle shrilled out, and the station-master made his
+last bow; I turned the steam on; and we started.
+
+My blood was on fire.  I no longer trembled or hesitated.  I felt as if
+every nerve was iron, and every pulse instinct with deadly purpose.  She
+was in my power, and I would be revenged.  She should die--she, for whom
+I had stained my soul with my friend's blood!  She should die, in the
+plenitude of her wealth and her beauty, and no power upon earth should
+save her!
+
+The stations flew past.  I put on more steam; I bade the fireman heap in
+the coke, and stir the blazing mass.  I would have outstripped the wind,
+had it been possible.  Faster and faster--hedges and trees, bridges and
+stations, flashing past--villages no sooner seen than gone--telegraph
+wires twisting, and dipping, and twining themselves in one, with the
+awful swiftness of our pace!  Faster and faster, till the fireman at my
+side looks white and scared, and refuses to add more fuel to the furnace.
+Faster and faster, till the wind rushes in our faces and drives the
+breath back upon our lips.
+
+I would have scorned to save myself.  I meant to die with the rest.  Mad
+as I was--and I believe from my very soul that I was utterly mad for the
+time--I felt a passing pang of pity for the old man and his suite.  I
+would have spared the poor fellow at my side, too, if I could; but the
+pace at which we were going made escape impossible.
+
+Vicenza was passed--a mere confused vision of lights.  Pojana flew by.
+At Padua, but nine miles distant, our passengers were to alight.  I saw
+the fireman's face turned upon me in remonstrance; I saw his lips move,
+though I could not hear a word; I saw his expression change suddenly from
+remonstrance to a deadly terror, and then--merciful Heaven! then, for the
+first time, I saw that he and I were no longer alone upon the engine.
+
+There was a third man--a third man standing on my right hand, as the
+fireman was standing on my left--a tall, stalwart man, with short curling
+hair, and a flat Scotch cap upon his head.  As I fell back in the first
+shock of surprise, he stepped nearer; took my place at the engine, and
+turned the steam off.  I opened my lips to speak to him; he turned his
+head slowly, and looked me in the face.
+
+Matthew Price!
+
+I uttered one long wild cry, flung my arms wildly up above my head, and
+fell as if I had been smitten with an axe.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I am prepared for the objections that may be made to my story.  I expect,
+as a matter of course, to be told that this was an optical illusion, or
+that I was suffering from pressure on the brain, or even that I laboured
+under an attack of temporary insanity.  I have heard all these arguments
+before, and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, I have no desire to hear
+them again.  My own mind has been made up upon this subject for many a
+year.  All that I can say--all that I _know_ is--that Matthew Price came
+back from the dead to save my soul and the lives of those whom I, in my
+guilty rage, would have hurried to destruction.  I believe this as I
+believe in the mercy of Heaven and the forgiveness of repentant sinners.
+
+                                 THE END
+
+
+
+
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