And Sara, standing alone and regretful that the friend had been lost in the lover, never guessed that Tim’s love was a thread which was destined to cross and re-cross those other threads held by the fingers of Fate until it had tangled the whole fabric of her life.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN IN THE TRAIN

“Oldhampton!  Oldhampton!  Change here for Motchley and Monkshaven!”

It was with a sigh of relief that Sara, in obedience to the warning raucously intoned by a hurrying porter, vacated her seat in the railway compartment in which she had travelled from Fallowdene.  Her companions on the journey had been an elderly spinster and her maid, and as the former had insisted upon the exclusion of every breath of outside air, Sara felt half-suffocated by the time they ran into Oldhampton Junction.  The Monkshaven train was already standing in the station, and, commissioning a porter to transfer her luggage, she sauntered leisurely along the platform, searching vainly for an empty compartment, where the regulation of the supply of oxygen would not depend upon the caprice of an old maid.

The train appeared to be very full, but at last she espied a first-class smoking carriage which boasted but a single occupant—­a man in the far corner, half-hidden behind the newspaper he was holding—­and, tipping her porter, she stepped into the compartment and busied herself bestowing her hand-baggage in the rack.

The man in the corner abruptly lowered his newspaper.

“This be a smoker,” he remarked significantly.

Sara turned at the sound of his voice.  The unwelcoming tones made it abundantly clear that the remainder of his thought ran:  “And you’ve no business to get into it.”  A spark of amusement lit itself in her eyes.

“The railway company indicate as much on the window,” she replied placidly, with a glance towards the Smoking Carriage label pasted against the pane.

There came no response, unless an irritated crackling of newspaper could be regarded as such—­and the next moment, to the accompaniment of much banging of doors and a final shout of:  “Stand away there!” the train began to move slowly out of the station.

Sara sat down with a sigh of relief that she had escaped her former travelling companions, with their unpleasant predilection for a vitiated atmosphere, and her thoughts wandered idly to the consideration of the man in the corner, to whom she was obviously an equally unwelcome fellow-passenger.

He had retired once more behind his newspaper, and practically all that was offered for her contemplation consisted of a pair of knee-breeches and well-cut leather leggings and two strong-looking, sun-tanned hands.  These latter intrigued Sara considerably—­their long, sensitive fingers and short, well-kept nails according curiously with their sunburnt suggestion of great physical strength and an outdoor life.  She wished their owner would see fit to lower his newspaper once more, since her momentary glimpse of his face had supplied her with but little idea of his personality.  And the hands, so full of contradictory suggestion, aroused her interest.