isappeared into his cottage, leaving Max to his own devices.
The latter examined the various railway advertisements on the notice
board, criticised the name of the station arranged in white flints on a
neatly-kept bank beside the platform, and then decided that he felt
hungry after his walk. Fifty yards or so further along the road was a
small inn, and toward this he made his way. Entering the bar, which was
unoccupied, he inquired of the buxom landlady if she could supply him
with a meal.

"It all depends, sir, what you want," the latter replied, shaking her
curls coquettishly at him; "if you'd like ham and eggs we can manage
that, or maybe a bloater if so be you'd relish it, but I don't know that
I can do better for you at this time o' night, at any rate."

Max decided in favour of the former, and a quarter of an hour later
might have been observed in the landlady's own private parlour, seated
before a steaming dish of ham and eggs, which he was devouring with an
appetite that was the outcome of a four-mile walk. I have seen that
landlady since, and have tried to make her understand who her guest was.

"Lor' bless you, sir," she said--for though I told her about Max, she
had not the least notion of my identity--"I don't know anything about
his being a prince, but what I do know is, that he ate his ham and eggs
hearty enough for a king, as I told my old man afterwards."

His meal disposed of, Max paid the bill, and returned to the station to
await the arrival of his train. The sun was sinking behind the trees on
the other side of the cutting, and the whole heavens were suffused with
crimson light. A belated cuckoo was wishing the world good-night in the
far distance, and the tinkling of bells on the harness of a waggoner's
team was wafted to him like faintest music upon the still evening air.
As he strolled up and down the platform, his thoughts involuntarily
returned to the Princess. He wondered whether she were thinking of him,
and how long it would be before he would be able to school himself to
forget her.

The first sign that heralded the train's approach was the arrival of a
hobbledehoy rustic of about sixteen on the platform. He carried in one
hand a bundle, tied up in a red pocket-handkerchief, and in the other a
ground-ash stick, with which he beat his leg to the tune of a music-hall
melody that had been popular in London some six months before. As Max
passed him on his way to the booking-office to take hi