d feet from the
station, and watched it going on into the darkness.

Afterwards, when his companions had composed themselves to sleep, and he
lay sleepless, listening to all that could be heard in the silent night,
curiously enough it was not upon the exciting circumstances of the early
evening that he mused chiefly, but upon the people he had seen in the
night train.

A seemingly little thing has sometimes the power to change those
currents that set one way and another within a man, making him satisfied
or dissatisfied with this or that. By chance, as it seems, a song is
sung, a touch is given, a sight revealed, and man, like a harp hung to
the winds, is played upon, and the music is not that which he devises.
So it was that Trenholme's encounter in the dusty car with the beautiful
woman who had looked upon him so indifferently had struck a chord which
was like a plaintive sigh for some better purpose in life than he was
beating out of this rough existence. It was not a desire for greater
pleasure that her beauty had aroused in him, but a desire for nobler
action--such was the power of her face.

The night passed on; no footfall broke the silence. The passing train
was the only episode of his vigil.

In the morning when Trenholme looked out, the land was covered deep in
snow.

CHAPTER X.

When the night train left Turrifs Station it thundered on into the
darkness slowly enough, but, what with bumping over its rough rails and
rattling its big cars, it seemed anxious to deceive its passengers into
the idea that it was going at great speed. A good number of its cars
were long vans for the carriage of freight; behind these came two for
the carriage of passengers. These were both labelled "First Class." One
was devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from
which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet,
were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way; its atmosphere, heated by
a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been
impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to
have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an
uncertain number of young people, placed near the lady who held the
baby, were of the same party; they slept in twos and threes, leaning on
one another's shoulders and covered by the same wraps. It was to seats
left vacant near this group that the man and his wife who had procured
the milk return