“Her’s signalled,” said the senior porter.  “Are ye travelling by her?”

Arthur had to decide in a moment.  Must he or must he not abandon Simeon and the trunk?  The train, a procession of lights, could be seen in the distance under the black sky.  He gave one glance in the direction of Simeon and the trunk, and then entered the station.

Simeon had been right.  He did catch the train.

It was fortunate that there was a wide margin between the advertised time of arrival of the Loop-Line train at Knype and the departure therefrom of the London express.  For, beyond Hanbridge, the Loop-Line train came to a standstill, and obstinately remained at a standstill for near upon forty minutes.  Dawn began and completed itself while that train reposed there.  Things got to such a point that, despite the intense cold, the few passengers stuck their heads out of the windows and kept them there.  Arthur suffered unspeakably.  He imparted his awful anxiety to an old man in the same compartment.  And the old man said: 

“They always keep the express waiting for the Loop.  Moreover, you’ve plenty o’ time yet.”

He knew that the Loop was supposed to catch the express, and that in actual practice it did catch it.  He knew that there was yet enough time.  Still, he continued to suffer.  He continued to believe, at the bottom of his heart, that on this morning, of all mornings, the Loop would not catch the express.

However, he was wrong.  The Loop caught the express, though it was a nearish thing.  He dashed down into the subterranean passage at Knype Station, reappeared on the up-platform, ran to the fore-part of the express, which was in and waiting, and jumped; a porter banged the door, a guard inspired the driver by a tune on a whistle, and off went the express.  Arthur was now safe.  Nothing ever happened to a North-Western express.  He was safe.  He was shorn of his luggage (almost, but not quite, indispensable) and of Simeon; but he was safe.  He could not be disgraced in the world’s eye.  He thought of poor, gallant, imperturbable, sprained Simeon freezing on the trunk in the middle of the cinder-waste.

III

The train stopped momentarily at a station which he thought to be Lichfield.  Then (out of his waking dreams) it seemed to him that Lichfield Station had strangely grown in length, and just as the train was drawing out he saw the word “Stafford” in immense white enamelled letters on a blue ground.  There was nobody else in the compartment.  His heart and stomach in a state of frightful torture, he sprang out of it—­not on to the line, but into the corridor (for it was a corridor train) and into the next compartment, where were seated two men.

“Is this the London train?” he demanded, not concealing his terror.

“No, it isn’t.  It’s the Birmingham train,” said one of the men fiercely—­a sort of a Levite.