ood in front of
the door, but with his back turned toward it, until the train was about
to start. Then he touched his hat again with a gesture of farewell, and
ran away to a second-class carriage.

I sighed with satisfaction as the train rushed swiftly through the
dimly-lighted suburbs of London, and entered upon the open country. A
wan, watery line of light lay under the brooding clouds in the west,
tinged with a lurid hue; and all the great field of sky stretching above
the level landscape was overcast with storm-wrack, fleeing swiftly
before the wind. At times the train seemed to shake with the Wast, when
it was passing oyer any embankment more than ordinarily exposed; but it
sped across the country almost as rapidly as the clouds across the sky.
No one in the carriage spoke. Then came over me that weird feeling
familiar to all travellers, that one has been doomed to travel thus
through many years, and has not half accomplished the time. I felt as if
I had been fleeing from my home, and those who should have been my
friends, for a long and weary while; yet it was scarcely an hour since I
had made my escape.

In about two hours or more--but exactly what time I did not know, for my
watch had stopped--my fellow-passengers, who had scarcely condescended
to glance at me, alighted at a large, half-deserted station, where only
a few lamps were burning. Through the window I could see that very few
other persons were leaving the train, and I concluded we had not yet
reached the terminus. A porter came up to me as I leaned my head through
the window.

"Going on, miss?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" I answered, shrinking back into my corner-seat. He remained
upon the step, with his arm over the window-frame, while the train moved
on at a slackened pace for a few minutes, and then pulled up, but at no
station. Before me lay a dim, dark, indistinct scene, with little specks
of light twinkling here and there in the night, but whether on sea or
shore I could not tell. Immediately opposite the train stood the black
hulls and masts and funnels of two steamers, with a glimmer of lanterns
on their decks, and up and down their shrouds. The porter opened the
door for me.

"You've only to go on board, miss," he said, "your luggage will be seen
to all right." And he hurried away to open the doors of the other
carriages.

I stood still, utterly bewildered, for a minute or two, with the wind
tossing my hair about, and the rain beating in sha