motives of
others; and Richard was anything but an unbiased judge, as he knit his
brow, told himself that he had the fight to begin now, and determined to
take help from no one who had known him in his prosperity.

With this feeling strong upon him he dismissed the man who had driven
him over; and, to the utter astonishment of the Saint Kitt's
station-master, took a third-class ticket for London, and entered a
compartment wherein were a soldier with a bottle, a sailor just landed,
an old lady with several bundles, bound on a visit to her boy in
London--a gentleman, she informed everybody, who kept a public--and the
customary rural third-class passengers.

And then the long, dreary journey began, Richard making up his mind to
suit himself to the company amongst whom he was thrown, and failing
dismally; for both soldier and sailor, whose idea of enjoyment seemed to
be that they must get hopelessly intoxicated as soon as possible, took
it as an offence that he would not "take a pull" of rum out of the
bottle belonging to the son of Neptune, and of gin from that of the son
of Mars.

To make up for this, Richard tried to be civil to a couple of rustic
lasses, who received all his little bits of matter-of-fact politeness
and conversation with giggles and glances at a young Devonian in the
corner of the carriage, till his brickdust-coloured visage became the
colour of one of his own ruddy ploughed fields, and he announced that
"for zigzpence he'd poonch that chap's yed."

Hereupon the old lady with the bundles loudly proclaimed a wish that her
"zun" was there; and ended by hoping that, if "this young man" (meaning
Richard) intended to make himself unpleasant, he would go into another
carriage.

It was hard--just at a time, too, when Richard's temper seemed to be
angular and sore--when the slightest verbal touch made him wince. But
he set his teeth, bore a good deal of vulgar banter with patience, and
was able to compliment himself grimly for his forbearance during the
long ride along that single line of Cornish railway that is one
incessant series of scaffold-like viaducts, over some of the most
charming little valleys in our isle.

After passing Plymouth, the old lady became so sociable that she dropped
asleep against our traveller. The rustics had given place to a tall
traveller; and the soldier and sailor grew hilariously friendly after
replenishing their bottles at Plymouth. And so, fighting hard to put
the past