alone. On the one bench of the down platform sat the
largest navvy I have ever seen in my life, softened and made affable
(for he smiled generously) with liquor. In his huge hands he nursed an
empty tumbler marked "L.S.W.R."--marked also, internally, with streaks
of blue-grey sediment. Before him, a hand on his shoulder, stood the
doctor, and as I came within ear-shot, this is what I heard him say:
"Just you hold on to your patience for a minute or two longer, and
you'll be as right as ever you were in your life. I'll stay with you
till you're better."

"Lord! I'm comfortable enough," said the navvy. "Never felt better in my
life."

Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice. "He might have died while
that fool conduct-guard was saying his piece. I've fixed him, though.
The stuff's due in about five minutes, but there's a heap to him. I
don't see how we can make him take exercise."

For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been
neatly applied in the form of a compress to my lower stomach.

"How--how did you manage it?" I gasped.

"I asked him if he'd have a drink. He was knocking spots out of the
car--strength of his constitution, I suppose. He said he'd go 'most
anywhere for a drink, so I lured onto the platform, and loaded him up.
'Cold-blooded people, you Britishers are. That train's gone, and no one
seemed to care a cent."

"We've missed it," I said.

He looked at me curiously.

"We'll get another before sundown, if that's your only trouble. Say,
porter, when's the next train down?"

"Seven forty-five," said the one porter, and passed out through the
wicket-gate into the landscape. It was then three-twenty of a hot and
sleepy afternoon. The station was absolutely deserted. The navvy had
closed his eyes, and now nodded.

"That's bad," said the doctor. "The man, I mean, not the train. We must
make him walk somehow--walk up and down."

Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the situation, and
the doctor from New York turned a full bronze-green. Then he swore
comprehensively at the entire fabric of our glorious Constitution,
cursing the English language, root, branch, and paradigm, through its
most obscure derivatives. His coat and bag lay on the bench next to the
sleeper. Thither he edged cautiously, and I saw treachery in his eye.

What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat, I
cannot tell. They say a slight noise rouses a sleeper more surely than