broke the engine and carriage after
carriage racing behind. Regardless of risk, he leaped from his seat and
flung up the window, crying--

"Ach, look! Ve shall be late!"

"That train is going north," said Eleanor. "Guess we've half an hour
good before yours comes in."

So little can mortals read the stars that he heaved a sigh of relief,
and even murmured--

"Ve have timed him very luckily!"

Ten minutes later they descended the hill to Torrydhulish Station. The
north-going train had paid its brief call and vanished nearly from sight
again; no one seemed to be moving about the station, and the Baron told
himself that nothing worse remained than the exercise of a little tact
in parting with his deliverers.

"Ach! I shall carry it off gaily," he thought, and leaping lightly to
the ground, exclaimed with a genial air, as he gave his hand to Eva.

"Vell! Now have I a leetle surprise for you, ladies!"

Nor did he at all exaggerate their sensation.

"Miss Maddison!"

Alas, that it should be so far beyond the power of mere inky words to
express all that was implied in Eva's accents!

"Miss Gallosh!"

Nor is it less impossible to supply the significance of Eleanor's
intonation.

"Ladies, ladies!" he implored, "do not, I pray you, misunderstand! I vas
not responsible--I could not help it. You both VOULD come mit me! No,
no, do not look so at me! I mean not zat--I mean I could not do vizout
both of you. Ach, Himmel! Vat do I say? I should say zat--zat----"

He broke off with a start of apprehension.

"Look! Zere comes a man mit a bicycle! Zis is too public! Come mit me
into ze station and I shall eggsplain! He waves his fist! Come! you
vould not be seen here?"

He offered one arm to Eva, the other to Eleanor; and so alarming were
the gesticulations of the approaching cyclist, and so beseeching the
Baron's tones, that without more ado they clung to him and hurried on to
the platform.

"Come to ze vaiting-room!" he whispered. "Zere shall ve be safe!"

Alack for the luck of the Baron von Blitzenberg! Out of the very door
they were approaching stepped a solitary lady, sole passenger from the
south train, and at the sight of those three, linked arm in arm, she
staggered back and uttered a cry more piercing than the engine's distant
whistle.

"Rudolph!" cried this lady.

"Alicia!" gasped the Baron.

His rescuers said nothing, but clung to him the more tightly, while in
the Baroness's startled eyes a harder