particulars of his own income from land
concisely stated. Jogglehead had come to give
counter evidence, but, when his turn came, all
he could demand was to know how the rogues
got at his ledger, and till this question was
answered, he would not utter a word one way
or the other, except some that were spoken of
as very unparliamentary language. So nothing
could be made of him, and he returned to
Grumbleton to make arrangements for the worst
grievance and trouble he had ever heard of, and
that was the giving up of his old tumble-down
tenement, and removal to a handsome and
substantial farm-house which the company built for
him.

But Drowse and his principal parishioners
went home with a new light. They saw—for
had it not been stated in evidence?—that
Grumbleton would become a favourite place of
residence for London merchants and City men, who
would go daily to and fro between Grumbleton
and London on their business. They heard, too,
for the first time, that the fine clay in Grumbleton
would be the means of giving a valuable
trade to the town; and there was abundant
proof that what everybody had hitherto known
as a dirty yellowish-looking gutter, would, by
help of the Grumbleton Extension Line, become
a famous chalybeate source of wealth; that, in
fact, the great public would flock to Grumbleton
to drink out of that gutter.

Accordingly, there was a wonderful reaction,
there was a rush for shares. The singular
generosity and public spirit of the directors and
railway contractors were evinced by the readiness
with which they facilitated our neighbours' labour
to possess shares, and even at the very last
moment, when the line was opened, they got rid of
every one of their shares at a premium. The
vicar headed the people, all promising
themselves—and the company never contradicted
them—eight per cent for their money, and a
prospect of double that amount. The prospect
still remains somewhat distant, but still there it
is, and meanwhile our dividends are about an
eighth per cent, which, as Drowse says, is a
difference, certainly.

Still we have got our railway, which brings
us within an hour or so of the metropolis. Somehow
or other, however, the metropolis has not
yet cared very much about being within an hour
or so of us. We had an express, but it seldom
put down any passenger at our station: so seldom,
that such an arrival was an event, and the
passenger was looked at and talked about for the
rest of the day. We had a dozen other trains
backwards and forwards, but not many passengers,
and the house built in the neighbourhood
of the chalybeate spring is yet unoccupied.
That gutter was bought by a company, and made
to flow in a conduit, like one of the London
drinking fountains: the water all coming out of
the mouth of an angel with wings, which was
said to be emblematical. And the New Hotel
Company is in the Bankruptcy Court at this very
time. I will relate something about our villa
residences by-and-by, when people come to live
in them, but a picture of them hung up at all
the stations on the Grumbleton Extension line.

What, with embankments slipping, and a
bridge or two falling, and the permanent way
not proving permanent, but settling itself after
any change in the weather, the express has a
fine time of it, running off the line, so that it is
a mercy nobody is killed, and would be a marvel,
only nobody but the officials travel by it. What
with all these and other misfortunes, it is a
matter of mystery how the Grumbleton Extension
does manage to pay that half-crown interest on
every hundred pounds sunk in it.

For, there are great difficulties besides speculative
ones. The express had no sooner come
out of one of the tunnels (there are seventeen in all
between London and Grumbleton, "A good deal
like each other," says Drowse), than the brickwork
came out as well, and, as the superincumbent
soil was fine sand, it choked the tunnel like a
snowdrift. So the company was obliged to get
a new contractor to patch things up a little, and
paid the bill by creating some new shares, and
raising the fares from Grumbleton to London to
the same figures as those of the old stage-coach.
Though it is right to add that the return fare is
cheaper than going and returning by the Regulator.

It is only justice to the officials to say that
they do their duty as well and as earnestly as it
is possible for men to do it, who have to learn
by daily experience what that duty is. Being
on new lines, with no money but what could be
borrowed, the company mostly took for its
servants men who had never been in a station
before, excepting when their desire was to get
out of it as soon as they could. Still, they
looked very well in their new uniforms, and but
for a pretty general sprinkling of arms in slings,
and here and there a station-master on crutches,
and porters with bandages on their wrists (signs
of the little accidents that had occurred to them
while learning their business), you never saw a
better looking staff of officials. For the first
six months or so, they were exceedingly polite
even to the ladies, and would carry carpet-bags
without so much as thinking of sixpence for the
trouble.

But the rolling stock! The engines, old four-
wheelers which panted, and joggled, and jumped
almost anywhere in frosty weather, but couldn't
pull a train against a head wind, how they used
to break down to be sure! In a drizzling rain,
sanding the rails was no use: the driving-wheels
could not get up to bite the sand. Still, when
they got the steam well up, and there was not
much wind ahead, these locomotives would run
along pretty well, especially down the inclines,
and the contractors took care to leave as many
inclines as they could. There was the Achilles,
which brought the parliamentary, "she was
always scrumptious at an incline," her driver
said, "and would make for the fields at the
curve, if he didn't keep her very steady."

The carriages were pretty tolerable, and well
cushioned, which was a good precaution in case
of accidents. For, as Drowse remarked, "if one