gruffly. He stared at her slowly up and down, down and up, appeared to awake to a suspicious interest, and opined gruffly, “You’d better go ’ome!”

“Just what I’m trying to do,” sighed poor Darsie to herself. She turned and went slowly back to her leather seat, and a second disconsolate review of the situation. In time to come this experience would rank as an adventure, and became an oft-told tale. She would chill her listeners with hints of The Tramp, evoke shrieks of laughter at her imitation of the porter. Darsie realised the fact, but for the moment it left her cold. Summer evenings have a trick of turning chill and damp after the sun is set, and the vault-like waiting-room was dreary enough to damp the highest spirits. How was she going to obtain that eightpence for a ticket?

The station clock struck nine; the porter took a turn along the platform and peered curiously through the dusty window; a luggage train rattled slowly past, an express whizzed by with thunderous din. The station clock struck the quarter, and still the problem was as far as ever from solution.

“Well,” sighed Darsie miserably, “I must just wait. I’m perished with cold already. In two more hours I shall be frozen. Rheumatic fever, I suppose, or galloping decline. It will settle Aunt Maria, that’s one good thing! but it’s hard all the same, in the flower of my youth! To think of all that a human creature can suffer for the sake of a miserable eightpence!”

She got up stiffly and pressed her face against the pane. People were beginning to assemble for the nine-ten. An old man with a satchel of tools, two old women with baskets. “The poor are always generous to the poor. Suppose I ask them? Twopence three farthings each would not kill them!” But when one is not used to begging, it is extraordinary how difficult it is to begin. Darsie tried to think of the words in which she would proffer her request, and blushed in discomfort. No! she could not. Of the two disagreeables it really seemed easier to shiver two hours, and retain one’s pride intact, and then, suddenly, the door of the waiting-room opened with a bang, and Dan’s heavy figure stood on the threshold! The cry of delight, of breathless incredulity with which Darsie leaped to her feet, must have been heard to the end of the platform. She rushed forward, clutched his arm, and hugged it fast in the rapture of relief.

“Oh, Dan—you angel—you angel! Have you dropped down straight from the skies?”

“Not I! Nothing so easy. Scorched along bad roads on 

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