LIFE LIKE THIS WOULD KILL ME!"]

"God!" he exclaimed, as he drained a glass of brandy and water and rose
to go. "A life like this would kill me. Well, this shall be the last
risk. If it turns out all right--as it must--I shall give this kind of
business up. I shall have plenty then, and old Charlie will go off and
live quietly and comfortably."

* * * * *

The rear guard of the seven o'clock Continental finished his last cup of
tea, put on his thick winter coat, kissed his wife and baby girl, and
took up his lantern preparatory to joining his train. He reached the
station as the great engine was being coupled and gave the driver a
cheery salute, which that official acknowledged with a surly growl.

"Something put Jimmy out to-night," he laughed to the fireman, a young,
inexperienced fellow, making his trial trip, and passed on to make his
inspection of things in general before starting.

At the last moment a richly-dressed gentleman, wearing a long fur coat,
and carrying a large travelling rug, entered a first-class smoking
compartment. This gentleman, whom numerous people on the platform
recognised as he passed and saluted respectfully, was Eustace Margraf,
Esq. The carriage he got into was an empty one, and, lying full length
on the seat, covered with his rug, he lit a cigar and composed himself
to make the best of a long and tiresome railway journey. The guard blew
his whistle, the great engine reproduced it in a loud, deep tone, and
the train steamed slowly out of the station, twenty minutes late in
starting.

Left to his own reflections, which were none of the liveliest, and
lulled by the motion of the train, our traveller soon fell into a fitful
sleep, wherein he was haunted by dreams that wrought upon his brain
until he was almost as nervous as he had been in his own room some hours
before.

He awoke suddenly, with a vague sense that the train was travelling at a
most unusual and unaccountable speed: and, as he leapt to his feet in a
half-dazed fright, they shot through Tunbridge--a place at which they
were timed to make a ten minutes' stop--and he was conscious of seeing,
as in a flash, a crowd of frightened and awe-struck faces looking at the
train from the platform. He sank back on the cushioned seat, seized with
a nameless terror. Time and space seemed to his overwrought nerves to be
filled with tokens of some approaching calamity which he was powerless
to prevent; the t