ents later, he was beside me, scowling down into my face.

'I swerved, dodged, doubled on my tracks, but he was always at me. Now
and again, for lack of breath, I halted, and he halted with me. And
then, when I had got my wind, I would start running again, in the insane
hope of escaping him. We came, by what twisting and turning course
I know not, to the great avenue, and as I stood there in an agony of
panting I had a dazed vision of the distant Hall. Really I had quite
forgotten I was staying at the Duke of Hertfordshire's. But Braxton
hadn't forgotten. He planted himself in front of me. He stood between me
and the house.

'Faint though I was, I could almost have laughed. Good heavens! was THAT
all he wanted: that I shouldn't go back there? Did he suppose I wanted
to go back there--with HIM? Was I the Duke's prisoner on parole? What
was there to prevent me from just walking off to the railway station? I
turned to do so.

'He accompanied me on my way. I thought that when once I had passed
through the lodge gates he might vanish, satisfied. But no, he didn't
vanish. It was as though he suspected that if he let me out of his
sight I should sneak back to the house. He arrived with me, this quiet
companion of mine, at the little railway station. Evidently he meant to
see me off. I learned from an elderly and solitary porter that the next
train to London was the 4.3.

'Well, Braxton saw me off by the 4.3. I reflected, as I stepped up into
an empty compartment, that it wasn't yet twenty-four hours ago since I,
or some one like me, had alighted at that station.

'The guard blew his whistle; the engine shrieked, and the train jolted
forward and away; but I did not lean out of the window to see the last
of my attentive friend.

'Really not twenty-four hours ago? Not twenty-four years?'

Maltby paused in his narrative. 'Well, well,' he said, 'I don't want you
to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of stronger
nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have coped
successfully with Braxton from first to last--might have stayed on till
Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all the while.
Even as it was, even after my manifold failures and sudden flight, I
don't say my position was impossible. I only say it seemed so to me. A
man less sensitive than I, and less vain, might have cheered up after
writing a letter of apology to his hostess, and have resumed his normal
existenc