Gendarmes awoke him to see his visa.  He showed it them by sheer mechanical instinct, and slept again in that dead weight of slumber the moment he was alone.  When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, “to the farthest place it goes,” and he was borne on now unwitting where it went; through the rich champaign and the barren plains; through the reddening vintage and over the dreary plateaux; through antique cities, and across broad, flowing rivers; through the cave of riven rocks, and above nestling, leafy valleys; on and on, on and on, while he knew nothing, as the opium-like sleep of intense weariness held him in it stupor.

He awoke at last with a start; it was evening; the stilly twilight was settling over all the land, and the train was still rushing onward, fleet as the wind.  His eyes, as they opened dreamily, fell on a face half obscured in the gleaming; he leaned forward, bewildered and doubting his senses.

“Rake!”

Rake gave the salute hurriedly and in embarrassment.

“It’s I, sir!—­yes, sir.”

Cecil thought himself dreaming still.

“You!  You had my orders?”

“Yes, sir, I had your orders,” murmured the ex-soldier, more confused than he had ever been in the whole course of his audacious life, “and they was the first I ever disobeyed—­they was.  You see, sir, they was just what I couldn’t swallow nohow—­that’s the real, right-down fact!  Send me to the devil, Mr. Cecil, for you, and I’ll go at the first bidding, but leave you just when things are on the cross for you, damn me if I will!—­beggin’ your pardon, sir!”

And Rake, growing fiery and eloquent, dashed his cap down on the floor of the coupe with an emphatic declaration of resistance.  Cecil looked at him in silence; he was not certain still whether this were not a fantastic folly he was dreaming.

“Damn me if I will, Mr. Cecil!  You won’t keep me—­very well; but you can’t prevent me follerin’ of you, and foller you I will; and so there’s no more to be said about it, sir; but just to let me have my own lark, as one may say.  You said you’d go to the station, I went there; you took your ticket, I took my ticket.  I’ve been travelling behind you till about two hours ago, then I looked at you; you was asleep sir.  ’I don’t think my master’s quite well,’ says I to Guard; ’I’d like to get in there along of him.’  ‘Get in with you, then,’ says he (only we was jabbering that willainous tongue o’ theirs), for he sees the name on my traps is the same as that on your traps—­and in I get.  Now, Mr. Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don’t think I’m a insolent, ne’er-do-well for having been and gone and disobeyed you; but you was good to me when I was sore in want of it; you was even good to my dog—­rest his soul, the poor beast!  There never were a braver!—­and stick to you I will till you kick me away like a cur.  The truth is, it’s only being near of you, sir, that keeps me straight; if I was to leave you I should become a bad ’un again, right and away.  Don’t send me from you, sir, as you took mercy on me once!”