“So you were at the Elster Arms again last night, Jones?” remarked the station-master, his tone reproving, whilst he passed over in silence Mr. Jones’s item of news.

“I wasn’t in above an hour,” grumbled the man.

“Well, it is your own look-out, Jones.  I have said what I could to you at odd times; but I believe it has only tried your patience; so I’ll say no more.”

“Has my wife been here again complaining?” asked the man, raising his face in anger.

“No; I have not seen your wife, except at church, these two months.  But I know what public-houses are to you, and I was thinking of your little children.”

“Ugh!” growled the man, apparently not gratified at the reminder of his flock; “there’s a peck o’ them surely!  Here she comes!”

The last sentence was spoken in a different tone; one of relief, either at getting rid of the subject, or at the arrival of the train.  It was about opposite to Hartledon when he caught sight of it, and it came on with a shrill whistle, skirting the village it towered above; a long line of covered waggons with a passenger carriage or two attached to them.  Slackening its pace gradually, but not in time, it shot past the station, and had to back into it again.

The guard came out of his box and opened the door of one of the carriages—­a dirty-looking second-class compartment; the other was a third-class; and a gentleman leaped out.  A tall, slender man of about four-and-twenty; a man evidently of birth and breeding.  He wore a light summer overcoat on his well-cut clothes, and had a most attractive face.

“Is there any law against putting on a first-class carriage to this night-train?” he asked the guard in a pleasing voice.

“Well, sir, we never get first-class passengers by it,” replied the man; “or hardly any passengers at all, for the matter of that.  We are too long on the road for passengers to come by us.”

“It might happen, though,” returned the traveller, significantly.  “At any rate, I suppose there’s no law against your carriages being clean, whatever their class.  Look at that one.”

He pointed to the one he had just left, as he walked up to the station-master.  The guard looked cross, and gave the carriage door a slam.

“Was a portmanteau left here last night by the last train from London?” inquired the traveller of the station-master.

“No, sir; nothing was left here.  At least, I think not.  Any name on it, sir?”

“Elster.”

A quick glance from the station-master’s eyes met the answer.  Elster was the name of the family at Hartledon.  He wondered whether this could be one of them, or whether the name was merely a coincidence.

“There was no portmanteau left, was there, Jones?” asked the station-master.

“There couldn’t have been,” returned the porter, touching his cap to the stranger.  “I wasn’t on last night; Jim was; but it would have been put in the office for sure; and there’s not a ghost of a thing in it this morning.”