llen in the early spring; the peace
of Paris had been concluded since March; our commercial relations with
the Russian Empire were but recently renewed; and I, returning home
after my first northward journey since the war, was well pleased with
the prospect of spending the month of December under the hospitable
and thoroughly English roof of my excellent friend Jonathan Jelf,
Esquire, of Dumbleton Manor, Clayborough, East Anglia. Travelling
in the interests of the well-known firm in which it is my lot to
be a junior partner, I had been called upon to visit not only the
capitals of Russia and Poland, but had found it also necessary
to pass some weeks among the trading-ports of the Baltic; whence
it came that the year was already far spent before I again set
foot on English soil, and that, instead of shooting pheasants with
him, as I had hoped, in October, I came to be my friend's guest
during the more genial Christmastide.

My voyage over, and a few days given up to business in Liverpool
and London, I hastened down to Clayborough with all the delight of
a school-boy whose holidays are at hand. My way lay by the Great
East Anglian line as far as Clayborough station, where I was to
be met by one of the Dumbleton carriages and conveyed across the
remaining nine miles of country. It was a foggy afternoon, singularly
warm for the 4th of December, and I had arranged to leave London by
the 4.15 express. The early darkness of winter had already closed
in; the lamps were lighted in the carriages; a clinging damp dimmed
the windows, adhered to the door-handles, and pervaded all the
atmosphere; while the gas-jets at the neighboring bookstand diffused
a luminous haze that only served to make the gloom of the terminus
more visible. Having arrived some seven minutes before the starting of
the train, and, by the connivance of the guard, taken sole possession
of an empty compartment, I lighted my travelling-lamp, made myself
particularly snug, and settled down to the undisturbed enjoyment of
a book and a cigar. Great, therefore, was my disappointment when,
at the last moment, a gentleman came hurrying along the platform,
glanced into my carriage, opened the locked door with a private
key, and stepped in.

It struck me at the first glance that I had seen him before,--a
tall, spare man, thin-lipped, light-eyed, with an ungraceful stoop
in the shoulders, and scant gray hair worn somewhat long upon the
collar. He carried a light water-pr