rmitted to proceed on our journey to London
along with the mail, but were left to kick our heels for some two hours
at the Dover station.

I went into the refreshment-room to look for my party; I had a notion I
should find them where the Briton's unswerving and unerring instinct
would be most likely to lead them. It turned out that I was right in my
conjecture. There they were, seated round a table with huge bowls of
steaming tea and monster piles of buttered toast and muffins spread on
the festive board before them. Ay, indeed, there they were; but _quantum
mutati ab illis_! how strangely changed from the noisy, rollicking set I
had known them in the railway-car and on board the steamer, ere yet the
demon of sea-sickness had claimed them for his own! How ghastly sober
they looked now, to be sure! And how sternly and silently bent upon
devoting themselves to the swilling of the Chinese shrub infusion and to
the gorging of indigestible muffins. It was quite clear to me that it
would have been worse than folly to venture upon addressing them while
thus absorbed in absorbing. So I resolved to await a more favorable
opening, and went out meanwhile to walk on the platform.

A short time I was left in solitary possession of the promenade; then I
became suddenly aware that another traveller was treading the same
ground with me--it was the dark elderly leader of the three. I glanced
at him as he passed me under one of the lamps. He looked pale and sad.
The furrowed lines on his brow bespoke deliberation deep and pondering
profound. All the infinite mirth of the preceding few hours had departed
from him, leaving him but a wretched wreck of his former reckless self.

"A fine night, sir," I said to break the ice--"for the season of the
year," I added by way of a saving clause, to tone down the absoluteness
of the assertion.

He looked at me abstractedly, merely reechoing my own words, "A fine
night, sir, for the season of the year."

"Why look ye so sad now, who were erst so jolly?" I bluntly asked,
determined to force him into conversation.

"Ay, indeed, why so sad now?" he replied, looking me full in the face;
then, suddenly clasping my arm with a spasmodic grip, he continued
hurriedly, "I think I had best confide our secret to you. You seem a man
of thought. I witnessed and admired the patient attention with which you
listened to your friend's abstruse talk in the railway-car. Maybe you
can find the solution of a mystery