deemed advisable by those to whose opinion in such matters I bow without
hesitation, that this narrative of certain events in the life of a
child--a necessary introduction to the narrative yet to come--should be
written by the person whom it most concerned. Now that her task is done,
she abnegates at once (and thankfully) the first person singular in
favour of the third, and whatever is told of her in the following pages,
is told, not by herself, but by that other pen, of which mention is made
above.

Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up,
there is a lapse of seven years.




CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.


Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10 a.m.
Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate the guard
as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying himself in
a quiet way--smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a bird's-eye
view now and again at the landscape that was flying past him at the rate
of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to speculate as to his
profession would have hesitated to set him down as a military man, even
had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in white letters on a black
portmanteau which protruded half-way from under his seat, rendered any
such speculation needless. He must have been three or four-and-forty