tform was already crowded with holiday-makers: a
few country dames laden with countless bundles, careworn workers
preparing to spend Christmas with friends or parents in their village
home, a sprinkling of schoolboys chafing at the slowness of the
clock. After a minute or so, I spied Simon Colliver moving among
this happy and innocent crowd like an evil spirit. I flung myself
down upon a bench, and under pretence of sleeping, quietly observed
him. Once or twice, as he passed to and fro before me, he almost
brushed my knee, so close was he--so close that I had to clutch the
bench tightly for fear I should leap up and throttle him. He did not
notice me. Doubtless he thought me already tossing out to sea with
the gulls swooping over me, and the waves merrily dashing over my
dead face. The waiting game had changed hands now.

I heard him demand a ticket for Penryn, and, after waiting until he
had left the booking office, took one myself for the same station.
I watched him as he chose his compartment, and then entered the next.
It was crowded, of course, with holiday-seekers; but the only person
that I noticed at first was the man sitting directly opposite to me--
an honest, red-faced countryman, evidently on his way home from town,
and at present deeply occupied with a morning paper which seemed to
have a peculiar fascination for him, for as he raised his face his
round eyes were full of horror. I paid little attention to him,
however, but, having the corner seat facing the engine, watched to
see that Colliver did not change his compartment. He did not appear
again, and in a minute or two the whistle shrieked and we were off.

At first the countryman opposite made such a prodigious to-do with
his piece of news that I could not help watching him. Then my
attention wandered from him to the country through which we were
flying. Slowly I pondered over the many events that had passed
since, not many months before, I had travelled up from Cornwall to
win my fortune. My fortune! To what had it all come? I had won a
golden month or two of love, and lo! my darling was dead. Dead also
was the friend who had travelled up with me, so full of boyish hope:
both dead; the one in the full blaze of her triumph, the other in the
first dawn of his young success: both dead--and, but for me, both
living yet and happy.

Suddenly the countryman looked up and spoke.

"Hav'ee seen this bit o' news? Astonishin'! And her so pretty