id the guard, 'we won't go without them, but
I'll call 'em; they'll mind me more than they will you, beggin' your
pardon, sir, and you'd better run on, as time's short, and keep places
for 'em. You leave it all to me; I'll take care on 'em.'

Mark heard faint barks across the hedge in the direction Mabel had
taken. The child was evidently found. The best thing, he thought, to
do now was to secure an empty compartment, and with that idea, and
perhaps a little from that instinctive obedience to anything in a
uniform which is a characteristic of the average respectable
Englishman, he let himself be persuaded by the guard, and went back to
the train.

To his great joy he found that the compartment Mabel had occupied had
no one in it; he stood waiting by the door for Mabel and her sister to
come up, with eager anticipations of a delightful conclusion to his
journey. 'Perhaps she will tell me who she is,' he thought; 'at all
events she will ask me who _I_ am. How little I hoped for this
yesterday!'

He was interrupted by a guard--another guard, a sour-looking man with
a grizzled beard, who was in charge of the front van. 'Get in, sir, if
you mean to travel by this 'ere train,' he said.

'I'm waiting for a young lady,' said Mark, rather ingenuously, but it
slipped out almost without his knowledge. 'The other guard promised
me----'

'I don't know nothing about no young ladies,' said the guard
obdurately; 'but if you mean my mate, he's just give me the signal
from his end, and if you don't want to be left be'ind you'd better
take your seat while you can, sir, and pretty sharp, too.'

There was nothing else to do; he could not search for Mabel along the
train; he must wait till they got to King's Cross; but he took his
seat reluctantly and with a heavy disappointment, thinking what a fool
he had been to let himself be persuaded by the burly guard. 'But for
that, _she_ might have been sitting opposite to me now!' he thought
bitterly. 'What a fool I was to leave her. How pretty she looked when
she wanted me to see a doctor; how charming she is altogether! Am I in
love with her already? Of course I am; who wouldn't be? I shall see
her again. She will speak to me once more, and, after all, things
might be worse. I couldn't have counted on _that_ when we started.'

And he tried to console himself with this, feeling an impatient anger
at the slow pace of the train as it crept cautiously on towards the
goal of his hopes. But th