_not_."

The traveller nodded conviction. "I suppose I can put up in the town?
There is a town here?" For the traveller (though a stay-at-home compared
with most travellers) had been, like many others, carried on the steam
winds and the iron tides through that Junction before, without having
ever, as one might say, gone ashore there.

"Oh yes, there's a town, sir! Anyways, there's town enough to put up in.
But," following the glance of the other at his luggage, "this is a very
dead time of the night with us, sir. The deadest time. I might a'most
call it our deadest and buriedest time."

"No porters about?"

"Well, sir, you see," returned Lamps, confidential again, "they in
general goes off with the gas. That's how it is. And they seem to have
overlooked you, through your walking to the furder end of the platform.
But, in about twelve minutes or so, she may be up."

"Who may be up?"

"The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a sidin' till the Up X
passes, and then she"--here an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded
Lamps--"does all as lays in her power."

"I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement."

"I doubt if anybody do, sir. She's a Parliamentary, sir. And, you see,
a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun--"