On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but the young man prefers smoking a cigarette.  By this time they have exchanged names.  D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African War—­says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have taken place and he can’t bear to think about it and was knocked out quite early in the day.  Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day a barrister.  Rossiter says—­after more talk, “Pity you’re going in for the Bar—­we’ve too many lawyers already.  You should take up Science”—­and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had never heard them treated previously.  In the Severn Tunnel the noise of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly takes up the position of pupil.  Between Newport and Neath, David thinks he has never met any one so interesting.  It has been his first real induction into the greatest of all books:  the Book of the Earth itself.  Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by this young expatriated Welshman.  David does not say much, but what he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and a person of trained intelligence.  Yet somehow the professor of Biology in the University of London—­and many other things beside—­F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that Academy and University abroad—­does not “see” him as a soldier or a non-commissioned officer in the British Army:  law-student is a more likely qualification.  However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter gives Mr. D.V.  Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) and—­though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about making acquaintances—­expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park Crescent some afternoon—­“My wife and I are generally at home on Thursdays”—­when all are back in town for the autumn.  They separate at Swansea station.

David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that parish, Mr.... er ...  Howel Vaughan Williams.  The “boots” or one of the “bootses,” it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight—­a nice old gentleman—­has heard that he’s aged much of late years since his son ran away and disappeared out in Africa.  His sight was getting bad, Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and writing he was once so great at.

After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V.  Williams is more disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and drafts a telegram:—­