"I don't know! I think we could do with another few kilometers to the
hour." The thin man studied his flat gold watch with the loving interest
of one to whom time is a sacred thing.

At this point the youngest of the three raised his head.

"Marvellous sight you have, McCutcheon! Wish I could see by this light!"

McCutcheon leaned forward, replacing his watch. "What! Can't you see
your picture-books? Let's have the blinkers off!" He rose, his long,
spidery figure stretching up like a grotesque shadow, but as his arm
went out to the nearest of the shrouded lamps he was compelled to draw
back against the seat of the carriage, and an exclamation of surprise
escaped him.

Without warning or apology the Russian boy had turned from the window,
and stepping down the carriage, had tumbled into his former seat,
hunching himself up with his face to the cushions and his back to his
fellow-travellers.

It was a sudden and an uncivil proceeding. The man called Blake smiled;
the Englishman shrugged his shoulders; the American, with a movement of
quiet determination, drew back the lamp hoods.

In the flood of light the carriage lost its air of mystery, and Blake,
who had a fancy for the mysterious, dropped back into his corner and
took out his cigar-case with a little feeling of regret. In traversing
the world's pathways, beaten or wild, he always made a point of seeing
the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common
instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps,
and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All
three had an eye for an adventure.

But the lights were up, and the curtain down—it was a theatre between
the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth
again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long
limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow.

"I can't get over that 'four jacks,'" he said. "To think I could have
been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!"

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