The wind and rain were less heavy and boisterous than they had been, and the moon was struggling faintly through driving clouds. As the man hurried along, seeing the lights of the station in the distance before him, a figure suddenly broke through the low hedge beside the road, scarcely more than a hundred yards in advance, and ran on in front, in the same direction. Philip Crowdy, hearing the warning shriek of the train, hurried on faster than before.

At the very entrance of the station-yard was a gas lamp, which served to light feebly the dreary-looking muddy roads converging upon it. And, beneath this lamp, the figure which had broken through the hedge, and run on before, had stopped, and was carefully scraping and shaking some heavy wet clay from its boots. Catching a glimpse of the face of the figure, as he hurried past, Crowdy, with an exclamation, drew his hat down well over his face, and pulled his coat collar higher.

There was no time even to get a ticket; Crowdy raced across the booking-office, and reached the platform just in time; wrenched open a door, and jumped in. He heard a shout, and, looking out, saw a porter pulling open another door, while the man who had been so particular about his boots sprang into the train. Then, the door was slammed, and the train, already in motion, steamed out of the station.

Philip Crowdy leant back in the compartment in which he found himself alone, and whistled softly. “This is a new move,” he muttered, “Dandy Chater himself—and without the girl. Well, most respectable Great Eastern Railway Company,” he added, with a laugh, apostrophising the name of the Company staring at him from the wall of the carriage—“it isn’t often that you carry, in one train, two such queer people as you carry to-night!” Then, becoming serious again, he said softly—“But I’d like to know what’s become of the girl.”

When the train reached Liverpool Street, Philip Crowdy remained in the carriage as long as possible, in order to avoid meeting the other man; and, on getting out, discovered to his annoyance that the other man had vanished—swallowed up in the restless crowds of people who were moving about the platforms. However, having one faint clue to guide him, he set off for Woolwich.

The Three Watermen is a little old-fashioned gloomy public-house, situated at the end of a narrow street, which plunges down towards the river, and on the very bank of that river itself. Indeed, it is half supported, on the riverside, by huge baulks of timber, round which the muddy water creeps and 

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