superiority, as on a something that was altogether _rococo_ and out of
date. Already the rash of new ideas into my mind was so powerful that
the old landmarks of my life seemed in danger of being swept clean away.
Already it seemed days instead of only a brief hour or two since I had
bidden Mrs. Whitehead farewell, and had taken my last look at Park Hill
Seminary.

The red-faced guard was as good as his word; he and I became famous
friends before I reached the end of my journey. At every station at
which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and
whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that
I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and
left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on the little
platform.

The one solitary fly of which the station could boast was laid under
contribution. My little box was tossed on to its roof; I myself was shut
up inside; the word was given, "To Deepley Walls;" the station was left
behind, and away we went, jolting and rumbling along the quiet country
lanes, and under over-arching trees, all aglow just now with autumn's
swift-fading beauty. The afternoon was closing in, and the wind was
rising, sweeping up with melancholy soughs from the dim wooded hollows
where it had lain asleep till the sun went down; garnering up the fallen
leaves like a cunning miser, wherever it could find a hiding-place for
them, and then dying suddenly down, and seeming to hold its breath as if
listening for the footsteps of the coming winter.

In the western sky hung a huge tumbled wrack of molten cloud like the
ruins of some vast temple of the gods of eld. Chasmed buttresses,
battlements overthrown; on the horizon a press of giants, shoulder