The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the train at
Whistlecrankie station. For the last twenty minutes his spirits had been
slowly sinking before the drifting procession past the carriage windows
of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in shape, but so cold and
sterile in expression that the swathes of yellow mist which lay in
their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed a gratuitous affectation of
modesty. And when the train moved away, mingling its escaping steam
with the slower mists of the mountain, he found himself alone on the
platform--the only passenger and apparently the sole occupant of the
station. He was gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon
itself a human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway
porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had evidently
been performing a double function, and lounged with exasperating
deliberation towards him. He was a hard-featured man, with a thin fringe
of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin like dirty strings to
tie his cap on with.

"Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?" he said moodily.

The consul said that he was.

"I kenned it. Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there. They'll
be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED." He glanced half
doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so sure of it.

But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the
certain prospect of a conveyance. The porter meanwhile surveyed him
moodily.