ul.

"I doubt if you will be able to read this letter. If you can make it
out, forgive it being so full of myself. The next will be full of quite
other things. All my love, Biddy.--Yours, PAM."

* * * * *

Three hours later the express stopped at the junction. The train was
waiting on the branch line that terminated at Priorsford, and after a
breathless rush over a high bridge in the dark Pamela and her maid,
Mawson, found themselves bestowed in an empty carriage by a fatherly
porter.

Mawson was not a real lady's maid: one realised that at once. She had
been a housemaid for some years in the house in Grosvenor Street, and
Pamela, when her own most superior maid flatly refused to accompany her
on this expedition, had asked Mawson to be her maid, and Mawson had
gladly accepted the offer. She was a middle-aged woman with a small
brown face, an obvious _toupee_, and an adventurous spirit.

She now tidied the carriage violently, carefully hiding the book Pamela
had been reading and putting the cushion on the rack. Finally, tucking
the travelling-rug firmly round her mistress, she remarked pleasantly,
"A h'eight hours' journey without an 'itch!"

"Certainly without an aitch," thought Pamela, as she said, "You like
travelling, Mawson?"

"Oh yes, m'm. I always 'ave 'ad a desire to travel. Specially, if I may
say so, to see Scotland, Miss. But, oh, ain't it bleak? Before it was
dark I 'ad me eyes glued to the window, lookin' out. Such miles of
'eather and big stones and torrents, Miss, and nothing to be seen but a
lonely sheep--'ardly an 'ouse on the 'orizon. It gave me quite a turn."

"And this is nothing to the Highlands, Mawson."

"Ain't it, Miss? Well, it's the bleakest I've seen yet, an' I've been to
Brighton and Blackpool. Travelled quite a lot, I 'ave, Miss. The lydy
who read me 'and said I would, for me teeth are so wide apart." Which
cryptic saying puzzled Pamela until Priorsford was reached, when other
things engaged her attention.

* * * * *

There was another passenger for Priorsford in the London express. He was
called Peter Reid, and he was as short and plain as his name. Peter Reid
was returning to his native town a very rich man. He had left it a youth
of eighteen and entered the business of a well-to-do uncle in London,
and since then, as the saying is, he had never looked over his shoulder;
fortune showered her gifts on him, and everyth