out of any impertinent curiosity, but that I hate being
foiled in a thing of this kind. What are you?"

"I 'll tell you what I am, sir," said I, indignantly, for now I was
outraged beyond endurance,--"I 'll tell you, sir, what I am, and what I
feel myself,--one singularly unlucky in a travelling-companion."

"Bet you a five-pound note you're not," broke he in. "Give you six to
five on it, in anything you like."

"It would be a wager almost impossible to decide, sir."

"Nothing of the kind. Let us leave it to the first pretty woman we see
at the station, the guard of the train, the fellow in the pay-office,
the stoker if you like."

"I must own, sir, that you express a very confident opinion of your
case."

"Will you bet?"

"No, sir, certainly not"

"Well, then, shut up, and say no more about it. If a man won't back his
opinion, the less he says the better."

I lay back in my place at this, determined that no provocation should
induce me to exchange another word with him. Apparently, he had not made
a like resolve, for he went on: "It's all bosh about appearances being
deceptive, and so forth. They say 'not all gold that glitters;' my
notion is that with a fellow who really knows life, no disguise that was
ever invented will be successful: the way a man wears his hair,"--here
he looked at mine,--"the sort of gloves he has, if there be anything
peculiar in his waistcoat, and, above all, his boots. I don't believe
the devil was ever more revealed in his hoof than a snob by his shoes."
A most condemnatory glance at my extremities accompanied this speech.

"Must I endure this sort of persecution all the way to Dover?" was the
question I asked of my misery.

"Look out, you're on fire!" said he, with a dry laugh. And sure enough,
a spark from his cigarette had fallen on my trousers, and burned a round
hole in them.

"Really, sir," cried I, in passionate warmth, "your conduct becomes
intolerable."

"Well, if I knew you preferred being singed, I'd have said-nothing about
it. What's this station here? Where's your 'Bradshaw'?"

"I have got no 'Bradshaw,' sir," said I, with dignity.

"No 'Bradshaw '! A bagman without 'Bradshaw'! Oh, I forgot, you ain't
a bagman. Why are we stopping here? Something smashed, I suspect. Eh!
what! isn't that she? Yes, it is! Open the door!--let me out, I say!
Confound the lock!--let me out!" While he uttered these words, in an
accent of the wildest impatience, I had but time to see