* * * * *

The train did stop, however, before Plymouth—­indeed, before Exeter.  An accident on the line had dislocated the traffic.  The express was held up for an hour, and when it was permitted to proceed, instead of thundering on, it went cautiously, subject to continual stoppings.  It arrived at Plymouth two hours late.  The travellers learned that they had missed the connection on which they had counted and that they could not reach Trehenna till nearly ten o’clock.  After weary waiting at Plymouth they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to carry them another stage on their journey.  Hot-water cans put in at Plymouth mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment.  But that only lasted a comparatively short time, for soon they were set down at a desolate, shelterless wayside junction, dumped in the midst of a hilly snow-covered waste, where they went through another weary wait for another dismal local train that was to carry them to Trehenna.  And in this train there were no hot-water cans, so that the compartment was as cold as death.  McCurdie fretted and shook his fist in the direction of Trehenna.

“And when we get there we have still a twenty miles’ motor drive to Foullis Castle.  It’s a fool name and we’re fools to be going there.”

“I shall die of bronchitis,” wailed Professor Biggleswade.

“A man dies when it is appointed for him to die,” said Lord Doyne, in his tired way; and he went on smoking long black cigars.

“It’s not the dying that worries me,” said McCurdie.  “That’s a mere mechanical process which every organic being from a king to a cauliflower has to pass through.  It’s the being forced against my will and my reason to come on this accursed journey, which something tells me will become more and more accursed as we go on, that is driving me to distraction.”

“What will be, will be,” said Doyne.

“I can’t see where the comfort of that reflection comes in,” said Biggleswade.

“And yet you’ve travelled in the East,” said Doyne.  “I suppose you know the Valley of the Tigris as well as any man living.”

“Yes,” said the Professor.  “I can say I dug my way from Tekrit to Bagdad and left not a stone unexamined.”

“Perhaps, after all,” Doyne remarked, “that’s not quite the way to know the East.”

“I never wanted to know the modern East,” returned the Professor.  “What is there in it of interest compared with the mighty civilizations that have gone before?”

McCurdie took a pull from his flask.

“I’m glad I thought of having a refill at Plymouth,” said he.