“There is a station close by it, but not the one I’ve brought you from.”
“Then they have deceived me, and I booked for the wrong station.”
“It can’t be altered now, ma’am. We must make the best of a bad job, but you’ll be all right enough.”
She walked to the brink of the river, and eyed the dark sullen torrent as it ran swiftly past.
She heard the rattling of chains, and, looking up, saw a man crossing the river in a large punt.
In the dusk of the evening the mass glided towards her like some monster ghost, and the noise of the chains added strongly to this impression.
The boat was moored to a post in the bank, the horses were led carefully in, the driver assisted the lady with rough courtesy into the boat, then the ferryman, having unloosed the chain, drove his long iron-pointed pole into the gravelly bottom of the river.
The boat moved slowly and silently through the water, which it cleaved into ripples with its broad bow. The sky was covered with clouds, some long, some narrow and streaky, floated irregularly over the general mass.
They are called mare’s tails, and generally forebode rain. The lightning flashes still continued, and once they heard a peal of thunder, faint and dull as an echo.
“The storm is coming up,” said the driver, and he patted his horses, which were sniffing the air nervously, and soothed them with those signs and words which form a language between men and the lower animals.