train.

The station-master, eager for unpleasing duty, emerged shouting:

"Stand back!"

But the porter would not see nor hear him, and opened the door of the
compartment immediately in front of that which his label had reserved.
The runners scrambled in.

Dick had been careful not to show his face until the door--the next, it
seemed--was banged shut. But a rapid glance at that very moment showed
him that it was indeed from the next compartment that came the
half-crown which the porter caught as it fell.

Dick settled back into his seat with the consciousness that the
partition against which he leaned was poor protection from a
revolver-bullet.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FALLING OUT.

"Is it they?" asked Amaryllis

"Two to one on," he answered.

"Next compartment?"

"Yes."

"Did they see us get in?"

"No."

"Then how can they know?"

"They saw the car outside, and the porter shutting this door. If they
hadn't, they'd have bundled in right opposite the entrance, instead of
running down the train," reasoned Dick.

"Will they try to come in here, then?" she asked.

"There's no corridor," said Dick.

"But outside? There was a murder--I read about it----"

"Take it easy, little wonder," he answered, with a smile which made of
his patronage a tribute. "I haven't got this far to crack in the last
lap. I'm thinking out a pretty story for the _Sunday Magazine_; so no
murders, please. They make me nervous. We're all right for a bit--next
station's fifteen miles ahead. They're getting their wind next door, and
talking it over."

He rose, and lifting Melchard's legs, made him lie at full length along
the seat farthest from the engine and the motor-cyclists. Next, he drew
down the little corner-blinds of each window, leaving the door-blinds
up; then sat down again resuming his attitude of abstraction.

In the silence which followed Amaryllis watched him until confidence
crept into her unawares, and she found herself becoming sleepily
interested in smaller matters than life and death. She did not believe
any longer that anyone could prevail against "Limping Dick."

She smiled to herself over the strange figure he cut, forgetting her
own.

His bulging pockets amused her into trying to remember all the things he
had stowed away in them.

The newest seemed to be an oily piece of cotton rag, sticking out from
the side pocket of his Norfolk jacket, which looked already, since she
had seen it first, three