," said the heartless man of the
road. "Start a little flush, don't you?"

I ignored this pointed inquiry.

"Not bank-notes, I hope--because they've an unkind way of stopping them.
Not but what you might get rid of one or two if you make haste. But
they're ugly things to track a chap out by, you know. Why, I knew a
young fellow, much your age and build, borrowed a whole sheaf of 'em and
went up north, and made up his mind he'd have a high old time. He did
slip through a fiver; but--would you believe it?--the next he tried on,
they were down on him like shooting stars, and he's another two years to
do on the mill before he can come another trip by the 1:30. They all
fancy this train."

This style of talk, much as it amused my fellow-passengers and
interested the man in the corner, made me feel in a most painful
position. My looks and blushes, I am aware, were most compromising; and
my condition generally, without luggage, without rug, without even a
newspaper, enveloped me in such an atmosphere of mystery and suspicion
that I half began to wonder whether I was not an absconding forger
myself.

Fortunately the train stopped at Willesden and I took advantage of the
halt to change my carriage, explaining clumsily that I should prefer a
carriage where I could sit with my face to the engine, whereat every one
smiled except myself and the man in the corner.

I tried hard to find an empty carriage; but the train was full and there
was no such luxury to be had. Besides, guards, porters, and station-
masters were all shouting to me to get inside somewhere, and a score of
heads attracted by the commotion appeared at the windows and added to my
discomfort. Finally I took refuge in a carriage which seemed less
crowded than the rest--having but two occupants.

Alas! to my horror and dismay I discovered when the train had started
that I had intruded myself on a palpably honeymoon couple, who glared at
me in such an unfriendly manner that for the next hour and a half,
without respite, I was constrained to stand with my head out of the
window. Even in the tunnels I had no encouragement to turn my head
round.

This was bad enough, but it would have been worse had it not happened
that, in craning my head and neck out of the window, I caught sight, in
the corner of the carriage--next to mine, of half of the back of a head
which I felt sure I knew. It belonged, in fact, to Michael McCrane, and
a partial turn of his face l