among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his
fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful
smell in the air--the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke,
that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but
seldom--a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the
infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a
perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just
as the one porter lighted the last of a truckload of lamps, and set them
back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of the
population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to
travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting
on a bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel.
I abode in obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever,
thank Heaven, in my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road.
The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and laid
a hand upon a horse's bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling
hind legs. It was the providential fly coming back, and for a moment I
wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to revisit his practice.

"Get away; you're drunk," said the driver.

"I'm not," said the navvy. "I've been waitin' 'ere hours and hours. Come
out, you beggar inside there!"

"Go on, driver," said a voice I did not know--a crisp, clear, English
voice.

"All right," said the navvy. "You wouldn't 'ear me when I was polite.
Now will you come?"

There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the
door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A
well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight,
hopping on one foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose
armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different
service of song.

"Come on, you bloomin' body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did
you?" roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly,
inarticulate with rage.

"Ere's a man murderin' the Squire," the driver shouted, and fell from
his box upon the navvy's neck.

To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were
on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It
was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch,
but it was the three third-class t