“To be sure she will,” said Anne, coolly.  “She has a very bad opinion of me.  I’m sure she doesn’t believe you expect to marry me.”

“By Jove, dear, it sounds rather dreadful, doesn’t it?” he groaned.  “But of course you are going to marry me, so what’s the odds?  Then she can marry Dauntless to her heart’s content.  I say, are we never to get away from this beastly place?”

“They are to row us across the river in boats.  We’ll be taken up by another train over there and carried on.  Poor Mr. Dauntless, he looks so harassed.”

“By Jove, I feel rather cut up about him.  He ought to have her, Anne.  He’s a decent chap, although he was da—­very unreasonable last night.  I like him, too, in spite of the fact that he kicked coal over me twice in that confounded bin.  He was good enough to take a cinder out of my eye this morning, and I helped him to find his watch in the coal-bin.  I say, Anne, we might get a farm wagon and drive to some village where there is a minister—­”

“No, Harry! you know I’ve set my heart on being married in a church.  It seems so much more decent and—­regular; especially after what has just happened.”

A porter appeared in the rear platform and shouted a warning to all those on the ground.

“Get yo’ things together.  The boats’ll be ready in ten minutes, ladies and gen’l’men.”  The locomotive uttered a few sharp whistles to reinforce his shouts, and everybody made a rush for the cars.

The conductor and other trainmen had all they could do to reassure the more nervous and apprehensive of the passengers, many of whom were afraid of the swollen, ugly river just ahead.  Boats had been sent up from a town some miles down the stream, and the passengers with their baggage, the express, and the mail pouches were to be ferried across.  Word had been received that a makeshift train would pick them up on the other side, not far from the wrecked bridge, and take them to Omegon as quickly as possible.

It was also announced that the company would be unable to send a train beyond Omegon and into the northwest for eight or ten hours, owing to extensive damage by the floods.  Repairs to bridges and roadbed were necessary.  In the meantime, the passengers would be cared for at the Somerset Hotel in Omegon, at the company’s expense.  The company regretted and deplored, etc.

There was a frightful clamour by the through passengers, threats of lawsuits, claims for damage, execrations, and groans.  In time, however, the whole company went trooping down the track under the leadership of the patient conductor.  It was a sorry, disgruntled parade.  Everybody wanted a porter at once, and when he could not get one, berated the road in fiercer terms than ever; men who had always carried their own bags to escape feeing a porter, now howled and raged because there was not an army of them on the spot.  Everybody was constantly “damning” the luck.