detained him for an instant by the arm.

"Friend of yours, sir?" said he, pointing to the man in spectacles on
the platform. "Never saw him before? I thought so. Sharper, sir, I'll
take my oath of it, or something worse. I know the sort; I've exposed
hundreds of them. Take my advice, sir, and never see him again."

With that the train glided on, leaving Mr. Ryfe and the gentleman
in spectacles staring at each other over a basket of fish and a
portmanteau.

"Mad!" observed the latter, with an uneasy attempt at a laugh, and a
readjustment of his glasses.

"Mad, no doubt," answered Tom, but followed the lunatic's counsel,
nevertheless, so far as to refrain from offering the other a lift
in the well-appointed brougham, with its burly coachman, waiting to
convey him to Ecclesfield Manor, though his late fellow-traveller was
proceeding in that direction on foot.

Tom had determined to sleep at the Railway Hotel, Bragford, ere he
returned to London next day. This arrangement he considered more
respectful than an intrusion on the hospitality of Ecclesfield, should
it be offered him. Perhaps so scrupulous a regard for the proprieties
mollified Miss Bruce in his favour, and called forth an invitation
to tea in the drawing-room when he had concluded the solitary dinner
prepared for him after his journey.

Tom Ryfe was always a careful dresser. Up to forty most men are. It
is only when we have nobody to please that we become negligent of