e arrival of the train. It was
about opposite to Hartledon when he caught sight of it, and it came on
with a shrill whistle, skirting the village it towered above; a long line
of covered waggons with a passenger carriage or two attached to them.
Slackening its pace gradually, but not in time, it shot past the station,
and had to back into it again.

The guard came out of his box and opened the door of one of the
carriages--a dirty-looking second-class compartment; the other was a
third-class; and a gentleman leaped out. A tall, slender man of about
four-and-twenty; a man evidently of birth and breeding. He wore a light
summer overcoat on his well-cut clothes, and had a most attractive face.

"Is there any law against putting on a first-class carriage to this
night-train?" he asked the guard in a pleasing voice.

"Well, sir, we never get first-class passengers by it," replied the man;
"or hardly any passengers at all, for the matter of that. We are too long
on the road for passengers to come by us."

"It might happen, though," returned the traveller, significantly. "At
any rate, I suppose there's no law against your carriages being clean,
whatever their class. Look at that one."

He pointed to the one he had just left, as he walked up to the
station-master. The guard looked cross, and gave the carriage door
a slam.

"Was a portmanteau left here last night by the last train from London?"
inquired the traveller of the station-master.

"No, sir; nothing was left here. At least, I think not. Any name on it,
sir?"

"Elster."

A quick glance from the station-master's eyes met the answer. Elster was
the name of the family at Hartledon. He wondered whether this could be
one of them, or whether the name was merely a coincidence.

"There was no portmanteau left, was there, Jones?" asked the
station-master.

"There couldn't have been," returned the porter, touching his cap to the
stranger. "I wasn't on last night; Jim was; but it would have been put in
the office for sure; and there's not a ghost of a thing in it this
morning."

"It must have been taken on to Garchester," remarked the traveller; and,
turning to the guard, he gave him directions to look after it, and
despatch it back again by the first train, slipping at the same time a
gratuity into his hand.

The guard touched his hat humbly; he now knew who the gentleman was. And
he went into inward repentance for slamming the carriage-door, as he got
into his b