another bottle. How are you, gentlemen? Lucky,
indeed, to meet you both again. Julia's with
the luggage. We can be very cozy together.
More champagne here. What's bottle in
French? Most shameful thing! Those French
friends of Julia's were gone off to Biarritz,
pretending to have forgotten that we were coming
—after six weeks with us in London, too!
Precious shabby, not to put too fine a point upon it.
By Jove, sir, there's the bell. We'll all go in the
same carriage. They will not bring that champagne."

Levison looked rather annoyed. "I shall
not see you," he said, "for a station or two.
I must join those boys, and let them give me
my revenge. Cleared me out of twenty guineas!
I have not been so imprudent since I was first
on the road. Good-bye, Major Baxter—good-bye,
Mr. Blamyre!"

I wondered how this respectable old fellow,
who so keenly relished his game at whist, had
got hold of my name; but I remembered in a
moment that he must have seen the direction on
my luggage.

Flashes of crimson and green lights, a shout
from some pointsman, a glimpse of rows of
poplars, and lines of suburban houses, and we
once more plunged into the yielding darkness.

I found the major very droll and pleasant,
but evidently ruled by his fussy, good-natured,
managing, masculine wife. He was full of
stories of bungalows, compounds, and the hills;
in all of which narrations he was perpetually
interrupted by Mrs. Baxter.

"By Jove, sir!" he said, "I wish I could
sell out, and go into your line of business. I
am almost sick of India—it deranges one's liver
so infernally."

"Now, John, how can you go on so! You
know you never had a day's illness in all your
life, except that week when you smoked out a
whole box of Captain Mason's cheroots."

"Well, I pulled through it, Julia," said the
major, striking himself a tremendous blow on
the chest; "but I've been an unlucky devil as
to promotion—always bad luck in everything.
If I bought a horse, it made a point of going
lame next day; never went in a train but it
broke down."

"Now don't, John; pray don't go on so,"
said Mrs. Baxter, "or I shall really be very
angry. Such nonsense! You'll get your step in
time. Be patient, like me, major; take things
more quietly. I hope you put a direction on
that hat-box of yours? Where is the sword-case?
If it wasn't for me, major, you'd get to
Suez with nothing but the coat on your back."

Just then, the train stopped at Charmont,
and in tripped Levison, with his white mackintosh
over his arm, and his bundle of umbrellas
and sticks.

"No more sovereign points for me!" he said,
producing a pack of cards. "But if you and the
major and Mrs. Baxter would like a rubber—
shilling points—I'm for you. Cut for partners."

We assented with pleasure. We cut for
partners. I and Mrs. Baxter against the major
and Levison. We won nearly every game.
Levison played too cautiously, and the major
laughed, talked, and always forgot what cards
were out.

Still it killed the time; the red and black
turned up, changed, and ran into remarkable
sequences; and the major's flukes and
extraordinary luck in holding (not in playing) cards
amused us, we laughed at Levison's
punctilious care, and at Mrs. Baxter's avarice for
tricks, and were as pleasant a party as the dim
lamp of a night-train ever shone on. I could think
of little, nevertheless, but my precious boxes.

There we were rushing through France, seeing
nothing, heeding nothing, and having as little to
do with our means of transit as if we had been
four Arabian princes, seated on a flying
enchanted carpet.

The game gradually grew more intermittent,
the conversation more incessant. Levison, stiff
of neckcloth as ever, and imperturbable and
punctilious as ever, became chatty. He grew
communicative about his business.

"I have at last," he said, in his precise and
measured voice, "after years of attention to the
subject, discovered the great secret which the
waterproofers have so long coveted; how to let
out the heated air of the body, and yet at the
same time to exclude the rain. On my return
to London, I offer this secret to the Mackintosh
firm for ten thousand pounds; if they
refuse the offer, I at once open a shop in Paris,
call the new fabric Magentosh, in honour of the
emperor's great Italian victory, and sit down and
quietly realise a cool million—that's my way!"

"That's the real business tone," said the
major, admiringly.

"Ah, major," cried his wife, ever ready to
improve a subject, "if you had only had a little
of Mr. Levison's prudence and energy, then,
indeed, you'd have been colonel of your regiment
before this."

Mr. Levison then turned the conversation to
the subject of locks.

"I always use the letter-lock myself," he said.
"My two talismanic words are TURLURETTE
and PAPAGAYO—two names I once heard in
an old French farce—who could guess them?
It would take the adroitest thief seven hours to
decipher even one. You find letter-locks safe,
sir?" (He turned to me.)

I replied dryly that I did, and asked what
time our train was due at Lyons.

"We are due at Lyons at 4.30," said the
major; "it is now five to four. I don't know
how it is, but I have a sort of presentiment
tonight of some break-down. I am always in for it.
When I went tiger-hunting, it was always my
elephant that the beast pinned. If some of us
were ordered up to an unhealthy out-of-the-way
fort, it was always my company. It may be
superstitious, I own, but I feel we shall have a
break-down before we get to Marseilles. How fast
we're going! Only see how the carriage rocks!"

I unconsciously grew nervous, but I
concealed it. Could the major be a rogue, planning
some scheme against me? But no: his red