CHAPTER II.


AN ACCIDENT.

While the two were talking, a long train, part carriages, part trucks,
was rattling through a dreary country, where it could never have been
were there not regions very different on both sides of it. For miles in
any direction, nothing but humpy moorland was to be seen, a gathering of
low hills, with now and then a higher one, its sides broken by
occasional torrents, in poor likeness of a mountain. No smoke proclaimed
the presence of human dwelling; but there were spots between the hills
where the hand of man had helped the birth of a feeble fertility; and in
front was a small but productive valley, on the edge of which stood the
ancient house of Potlurg, with the heath behind it: over a narrow branch
of this valley went the viaduct.

It was a slow train, with few passengers. Of these one was looking from
his window with a vague, foolish sense of superiority, thinking what a
forgotten, scarce created country it seemed. He was a well-dressed,
good-looking fellow, with a keen but pale-gray eye, and a fine forehead,
but a chin such as is held to indicate weakness. More than one, however,
of the strongest women I have known, were defective in chin. The young
man was in the only first-class carriage of the train, and alone in it.
Dressed in a gray suit, he was a little too particular in the smaller
points of his attire, and lacked in consequence something of the look of
a gentleman. Every now and then he would take off his hard round hat,