The train was going so fast now that it rocked to and fro, and hummed and sang; but it seemed to Dale to be standing still—­to be going backward.  This illusion was so strong for some moments that he jumped up and went out into the corridor, to look down at the permanent way on that side also.  The lamplight from the train showed on both sides that the sleepers, the chairs, the gravel, slipped and slid in the correct direction.  The train was flying, simply flying along the inner up-track of the four sets of metals.

“I mustn’t be so fullish,” he kept saying to himself.  “I’m all safe now.”

A sudden noise of voices drew him to the corridor; and he stood holding a hand-rail, watching the leather walls and the gangway that led into the next coach leap and dance and bob and sink, while he listened eagerly.  The roar of the train was so great here that he could not catch what the hidden men were saying, but he understood that they were sailors making too much noise and a railway guard rebuking them.  “It’s nothing to do with me,” he said to himself.  “Why am I so fullish?”

He returned to the compartment, sat with his shoulder to the corridor, and brooded dully and heavily.  All that fiery trouble about Mavis and her being dishonored had gone out of his mind as if forever; the grievance and the rage and the hatred had gone too; temporarily there was nothing but a most ponderous self-pity.

“What a mess this is,” he thought.  “What a hash I’ve made of it.  What a cruel thing to happen to me.  What an awful hole I’ve put myself into.”

The train swept onward, and he began to doze.  Then after a while he slept and dreamed.  He dreamed that he was here in this train, not fettered, but spell-bound, unable to move and hide, only able to understand what was happening and to suffer from his perception of the hideous predicament that he was in.  Another train, on another of the four tracks, was racing after this train, was overhauling it, was infallibly catching it.  Mysteriously he could see into this following, hunting train—­it was a train full of policemen, magistrates, wardens, judges, hangmen:  all the offended majesty of the law.

He woke shivering, after this first taste of a murderer’s dreams.  His punishment had begun.

It was daylight at Waterloo, and he slunk in terror; but things had to be done.  He washed himself as well as he could, took off his dirty canvas, got his bag from the cloak-room and hurried away.  No questions were asked, no bones made about giving him a room at a house in Stamford Street; and he at once went to bed and slept profoundly.

When he woke this time he was quite calm, and able to think clearly again.

He went out late in the afternoon, and saw a message for him on newspaper bills:  “Fatal Accident to ex-Cabinet Minister.”  Then, having bought a paper, he read the very brief report of the accident.  He stood gasping, and then drew deep breaths.  The Accident.  Oh, the joy of seeing that word!  No suspicion so far.  It was working out just as one might hope.