ob's friendly tone, coupled with the sight of the tempting viands, at
once removed any of Dick's lingering scruples; and, in another minute,
he was gobbling up the sandwiches like a famished wolf--his fellow-
travellers looking on with the utmost complacency and satisfaction at
the rapidity with which he got rid of them, bolting the little squares
of bread and meat one by one.

All this time, the engine was puffing and snorting away as if it had a
bad attack of asthma, giving a fierce pull every now and then to the
dragging carriages behind it; while, when the stalwart iron horse
occasionally loitered in his paces or slackened speed in going round a
sharp curve on the line, the coupling-chains would rattle as they lost
their tension and the buffers of the carriages behind, going faster for
the moment than the engine, would come together with a bang that
vibrated through the marrow-bones of all!

The scenery altered, too, every instant along the route; the wooded
heights around Guildford and Godalming and Haslemere, which the poet
Tennyson loved and where he lived and died, being succeeded by a stretch
of level landscape, and this again by the steep bare hills encircling
sleepy Petersfield.

Presently, a range of downs came in sight, curving away in horse-shoe
fashion from right to left, on which were a series of red-brick,
detached structures, placed along the topmost ridge at equal intervals
apparently, until they were lost in the distance.

As they approached these nearer, Miss Nellie's sharp eyes noticed that
on the landward side these brick piles were covered with a slant of
smoothly-shaven green turf that contrasted conspicuously with the chalky
surface of the sloping ridge.

"What funny things those are!" said she, pointing these out to Bob.
"Are they houses, or tombs, or what?"

"Where, what do you mean?" asked the Captain, turning round from his
contemplation of Dick, who, having finished the packet of sandwiches,
was now carefully searching the piece of newspaper in which they had
been wrapped up on the chance of there being a few stray crumbs left.
"Why, hullo, here we are close to our destination! Those `funny
things,' as you style them, missy, are the Portsdown forts--you are not
far out though, in your estimate of their appearance, for they're called
`Palmerston's Follies' by the political wags here."

"Are we near Portsmouth then?" said Nellie, peering out anxiously. "I
don't see anything!"

"O