ring a station; the earth walls at either side
receded; the view opened; a spire of a church, trees, houses appeared;
and, our speed diminishing, we came bumping, throbbing, and snorting
into a little trim garden-like spot, that at the moment seemed to me a
paradise.

I beckoned to the guard to let me out,--to do it noiselessly I slipped a
shilling into his band. I grasped my knapsack and my wrapper, and stole
furtively away. Oh, the happiness of that moment as the door closed
without awakening him!

"Anywhere--any carriage--what class you please," muttered I. "There,
yonder," broke I in, hastily,--"where that lady in mourning has just got
in."

"All full there, sir," replied the man; "step in here.": And away we
went.

My compartment contained but one passenger; he wore a gold band round
his oil-skin cap, and seemed the captain of a mail steamer, or Admiralty
agent; he merely glanced at me as I came in, and went on reading his
newspaper.

"Going north, I suppose?" said he, bluntly, after a pause of some time.
"Going to Germany?"

"No" said I, rather astonished at his giving me this destination. "I 'm
for Brussels."

"We shall have a rough night of it, outside; glass is falling suddenly,
and the wind has chopped round to the southward and eastward!"

"I'm sorry for it," said I. "I'm but an indifferent sailor."

"Well, I 'll tell you what to do: just turn into my cabin, you 'll
have it all to yourself; lie down flat on your back the moment you
get aboard; tell the steward to give you a strong glass of
brandy-and-water--the captain's brandy say, for it is rare old stuff,
and a perfect cordial, and my name ain't Slidders if you don't sleep all
the way across."

I really had no words for such unexpected generosity; how was I to
believe my ears at such a kind proposal of a perfect stranger? Was it
anything in my appearance that could have marked me out as an object
for these attentions? "I don't know how to thank you enough," said I, in
confusion; "and when I think that we meet now for the first time--"

"What does that signify?" said he, in the same short way. "I 've met
pretty nigh all of you by this time. I 've been a matter of eleven years
on this station!"

"Met pretty nigh all of us!" What does that mean? Who and what are we?
He can't mean the Pottses, for I 'm the first who ever travelled even
thus far! But I was not given leisure to follow up the inquiry, for he
went on to say how in all that time of