out on the Quebec line." He wanted
to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were
made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at
the next station, which was still within the American border, on that
line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half
an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch
asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in
starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and
waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long
all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to
Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his
journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal
with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any
possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had
prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it,
with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every
faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that
perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he
was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed
his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer
agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him;
and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but
should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent
of others in the effort to retrieve his losses.

II.

At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their
talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an
interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying
personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made
themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers.
They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends
were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked
freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and
they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of
them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the
Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in
Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Thei