was forgetting his English.

"If M'sieur will not occupy his own bed, yes," said the guard, shrugging
his shoulders and washing his hands of the whole incomprehensible
affair. "M'sieur will then be up to receive the Customs officers at the
frontier. Perhaps he will give me the keys to Madame's trunks, so that
she may not be disturbed."

"Ask her for 'em yourself," growled Brock, after one dazed moment of
dismay.

The hours crawled slowly by. He paced the length of the wriggling
corridor a hundred times, back and forth; he sat on every window-seat in
the carriage; he nodded and dozed and groaned, and laughed at himself in
the deepest derision all through the dismal night. Daylight came at
four; he saw the sun rise for the first time in his life. He neither
enjoyed nor appreciated the novelty. Never had he witnessed anything so
mournfully depressing as the first grey tints that crept up to mock him
in his vigil; never had he seen anything so ghastly as the soft red glow
that suffused the morning sky.

"I'll sleep all day if I ever get into that damned bed," he said to
himself, bitterly wistful.

The Customs officers had eyed him suspiciously at the border. They
evidently had been told of his strange madness in refusing to occupy the
berth he had paid for. Their examination of his effects was more
thorough than usual. It may have entered their heads that he was
standing guard over the repose of a fair accomplice. They asked so many
embarrassing and disconcerting questions that he was devoutly relieved