this vital fact — early in our correspondence? We should have understood. We should have made allowances."

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Allowances be damned. Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?"

The two men looked guilty.

"If Mr. Sargent's friend had told us as much in the beginning," said the doctor, very severely, "much might have been saved."

made a life's enemy of that doctor.

66

"I hadn't a chance," I replied.

replied.

Alas! I had

"Now, of course, you can see that a man who owns several thousand miles of line, as Mr. Sargent does, would be apt to treat railways a shade more casually than other people."

66

Of course; of course. He is an American; that accounts. Still, it was the Induna; but I can quite understand that the customs of our cousins across the water differ in these particulars from ours. And do you always stop trains in this way in the States, Mr. Sargent ?"

"I should if occasion ever arose; but I've never had to yet. Are you going to make an international complication of the business?"

"You need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter. We see that there is no likelihood of this action of yours establishing a precedent, which was the only thing we were afraid of. Now that you understand that we cannot

reconcile our system to any sudden stoppages, we feel quite sure that—"

"I sha'n't be staying long enough to flag another train," Wilton said pensively.

66

"You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen across the - ah big pond, you call it?" No, sir. The ocean-the North Atlantic Ocean. It's three thousand miles broad, and three miles deep in places. I wish it were ten thou

sand."

66

"I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think it is every Englishman's duty once in his life to study the great branch of our Anglo-Saxon race across the ocean," said the lawyer.

"If ever you come over, and care to flag any train on my system, I'll-I'll see you through," said Wilton.

You're very

"Thank you-ah, thank you. kind. I'm sure I should enjoy myself immensely." "We have overlooked the fact," the doctor whispered to me, “that your friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian."

66

He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars-four to five million pounds," I answered, knowing that it would be hopeless to explain.

66

Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great Buchonian is not in the market."

"Perhaps he does not want to buy it now."

"It would be impossible under any circumstances," said the doctor.

"How characteristic!" murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his mind. "I always understood from books that your countrymen were in a hurry. And so you would have gone forty miles to town and back-before dinner-to get a scarab? How intensely American! But you talk exactly like an Englishman, Mr. Sargent."

"That is a fault that can be remedied. There's only one question I'd like to ask you. You said it was inconceivable that any man should stop a train on your road?"

"And so it is—absolutely inconceivable."

66

Any sane man, that is ?"

"That is what I meant, of course.

I mean,

The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he was about to fill a pipe, took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for fifteen

minutes.

Then said he "Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on you?"

Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless gravel drives, and the mintsauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a river called the Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered

with the palaces of those wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where the hoot of the Haverstraw brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the locomotive on either shore, you shall find, with a complete installation of electric light, nickelplated binnacles, and a calliope attachment to her steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht Columbia, lying at her private pier, to take to his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an hour-and the barges can look out for themselves - Wilton Sargent, American.