to my memory, and he conducted me from the first-class compartment
where I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker,
occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child. He went off
grumbling, and as I mopped my brow I observed to my companions
in my broadest Scots that it was a sore job catching trains. I had
already entered upon my part.

'The impidence o' that gyaird!' said the lady bitterly. 'He needit a
Scotch tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin' o' this
wean no haein' a ticket and her no fower till August twalmonth,
and he was objectin' to this gentleman spittin'.'

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an
atmosphere of protest against authority. I reminded myself that a
week ago I had been finding the world dull.


CHAPTER THREE
The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper


I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May
weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked
myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London
and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face
the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon-basket at Leeds and shared
it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news
about starters for the Derby and the beginning of the cricket season,
and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down
and a British squadron was going to Kiel.