The accommodation, provided for passengers waiting at this Junction,
was distinctly inadequate--a single wooden bench, apparently intended
for three sitters only: and even this was already partially occupied by
a very old man, in a smock frock, who sat, with rounded shoulders and
drooping head, and with hands clasped on the top of his stick so as to
make a sort of pillow for that wrinkled face with its look of patient
weariness.

"Come, you be off!" the Station-master roughly accosted the poor old
man. "You be off, and make way for your betters! This way, my Lady!"
he added in a perfectly different tone. "If your Ladyship will take a
seat, the train will be up in a few minutes." The cringing servility of
his manner was due, no doubt, to the address legible on the pile of
luggage, which announced their owner to be "Lady Muriel Orme, passenger
to Elveston, via Fayfield Junction."

As I watched the old man slowly rise to his feet, and hobble a few
paces down the platform, the lines came to my lips:-

"From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,
With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd;
A hundred years had flung their snows
On his thin locks and floating beard."

[Image...'Come, you be off!']

But the lady scarcely noticed the little incident. After one
glance at the 'banished man,' who stood tremulously leaning on his
stick, she turned to me. "This is not an American rocking-chair, by any
means! Yet may I say," slightly changing her place, so as to make room