Here my personal narrative ends.  From this point the story of which the preceding pages form a part will be recorded by another pen.  It was deemed advisable by those to whose opinion in such matters I bow without hesitation, that this narrative of certain events in the life of a child—­a necessary introduction to the narrative yet to come—­should be written by the person whom it most concerned.  Now that her task is done, she abnegates at once (and thankfully) the first person singular in favour of the third, and whatever is told of her in the following pages, is told, not by herself, but by that other pen, of which mention is made above.

Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up, there is a lapse of seven years.

CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.

Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10 a.m.  Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate the guard as to secure a whole compartment to himself.  He was enjoying himself in a quiet way—­smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a bird’s-eye view now and again at the landscape that was flying past him at the rate of forty miles an hour.  Few people who cared to speculate as to his profession would have hesitated to set him down as a military man, even had not the words, “Captain Ducie,” painted in white letters on a black portmanteau which protruded half-way from under his seat, rendered any such speculation needless.  He must have been three or four-and-forty years old, judging from the lines about his mouth and eyes, but in some other respects he looked considerably younger.  He wore neither beard nor whiskers, but his short hair, and his thick, drooping moustache were both jet black, and betrayed as yet, thanks either to Nature or Art, none of those straggling streaks of silver which tell so plainly of the advance of years.  He had a clear olive complexion, a large aquiline nose and deep-set eyes, piercing and full of fire, under a grand sweep of eyebrow.  In person he was tall and thin; broad-chested, but lean in the flank, with hands and feet that looked almost effeminate, so small were they in comparison with his size.  A black frock-coat, tightly buttoned, set off to advantage a figure of which he might still be reasonably proud.  The remainder of his costume was in quiet keeping with the first fashion of the period.

Captain Ducie smoked and read and stared out of the window much as eleven out of twelve of us would do under similar circumstances, while milepost after milepost flashed out for an instant and was gone.  After a time he took a letter out of his breast-pocket, opened it, and read it.  It was brief, and ran as under:—­

“Stapleton, Scotland, March 31st.