THE FELLOW-PASSENGER 283 



to watch incoming trains discharge their human 

 freight. On the strength of having purchased 

 a copy of Family Snippets : A Journal for the 

 Home, I had deemed myself at liberty to glance 

 through most of the sevenpenny novels dis- 

 played upon the bookstall, until the man in 

 charge ventured to hint that he was not the 

 curator of a free Public Library, and I was 

 shamed into buying a copy (slightly soiled) of 

 " Broken Arcs," under the erroneous impression 

 that the work in question was a rudimentary 

 manual of electrical engineering. 



When, therefore, I was at last able to take 

 my seat in a first-class smoking carriage on the 

 2.30 express, I was feeling tired and unsociable, 

 and not at all inclined for human fellowship. 

 The heat of the day, combined perhaps wdth a 

 somewhat imprudent indulgence in milk choco- 

 late, Everton toffee, and other products of the 

 different automatic machines which I had 

 sampled in a vain attempt to stave off the 

 pangs of hunger, had rendered me more than 

 usually somnolent, and I awoke with a start to 

 find that the train had left the station, and that 

 I was not, as I had hoped, the sole occupant of 

 the carriage. 



My fellow-traveller must have entered while 

 I was dozing; but although I am as a rule a 

 light sleeper, I certainly never heard the carriage- 



