Hoof Beats 



seat in front of him, but when the train stopped at 

 Harkaway, it was odds on that they would be the 

 only two to get off the train except the conductor 

 who didn't really count of course. Therefore 

 as Mr. Leffington drove down the leisurely descent 

 of the last hill, and the station lay before him grim 

 and forbidding a few hundred yards away, a kind 

 of mental nervousness took possession of him 

 which he felt quite unable to throw off. At first 

 it occurred to him that he would wait innocently 

 in the cart behind the station and at least avoid 

 anything approaching a scene, which to Mr. 

 Leffington was a worse prospect than death itself, 

 but somehow this plan seemed to have points of 

 strategic weakness, and so when the whistle of the 

 engine was finally borne crisply down the wind 

 from the station beyond, it found Mr. Leffington 

 shifting his feet nervously, and lighting and re- 

 lighting his pipe, on the platform near the track. 

 The Nut-Cracker too seemed nervous and uneasy 

 upon hearing the on-coming whistle of the train, 

 but to anyone who knew him, this was but one of 

 his many poses, and while he trembled in the 

 shafts and snorted in the most approved thorough- 

 bred fashion, he stood unhitched and unnoticed. 



When the train finally rumbled up to the station 

 and stopped, the first person Mr. Leffington saw 

 was John Rexford on the steps of the smoker and 

 104 



