“I have been hunting for you everywhere.  What are you doing here?  Don’t you know——­”

The train started before he could finish.  Mr. Smythe’s opportunity was come.  His bedding, on the shelf, at once changed places with the bedding—­a stranger’s—­that was occupying the sofa that was opposite to mine.  About ten o’clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of official military bearing stepped in.  We pretended to be asleep.  The lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to note his look of surprise.  He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and wondering in silence at the situation.  After a bit be said:—­

“Well!” And that was all.

But that was enough.  It was easy to understand.  It meant:  “This is extraordinary.  This is high-handed.  I haven’t had an experience like this before.”

He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train.  Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out, muttering:  “I must find a lower berth, or wait over.”  His servant came presently and carried away his things.

Mr. Smythe’s sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge was satisfied.  But he couldn’t sleep, and neither could I; for this was a venerable old. car, and nothing about it was taut.  The closet door slammed all night, and defied every fastening we could invent.  We got up very much jaded, at dawn, and stepped out at a way station; and, while we were taking a cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody said to him: 

“So you didn’t stop off, after all?”

“No.  The guard found a place for me that had been, engaged and not occupied.  I had a whole saloon car all to myself—­oh, quite palatial!  I never had such luck in my life.”

That was our car, you see.  We moved into it, straight off, the family and all.  But I asked the English gentleman to remain, and he did.  A pleasant man, an infantry colonel; and doesn’t know, yet, that Smythe robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was done by Smythe’s servant without Smythe’s knowledge.  He was assisted in gathering this impression.

The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively.  The Indian stations except very large and important ones—­are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs.  The rank and file of the police are natives.  All these people are pleasant and accommodating.  One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away.  I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I would have done at home; I had no thought of any other course.  But a native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and said politely: