FULL STOP IN THE DAWDLE FROM THE NORTH.
(Leaves from the Highland Journal of Toby, M.P.)
"Here's a go", I said, turning to Sark, after carefully looking round the station to see if we really were back at Oban, having a quarter of an hour ago started (as we supposed) on our journey, already fifteen minutes late.
"Well, if you put it in that way", he said, "I should call it an entire absence of go. I thought it was a peculiarly jolting train. Never passed over so many points in the same time in my life."
"Looks as if we should miss train at Stirling", I remark, anxiously. "If so, we can't get on from Carlisle to Woodside to-night."
"Oh, that'll be all right," said Sark, airy to the last; "we'll make it up as we go along."
Again sort of faint bluish light, which I had come to recognise as a smile, feebly flashed over cadaverous countenance of the stranger in corner seat.
Certainly no hurry in getting off. More whistling, more waving of green flag. Observed that natives who had come to see friends off had quietly waited on platform. Train evidently expected back. Now it had returned they said good-bye over again to friends. Train deliberately steams out of station thirty-five minutes late. Every eight or ten miles stopped at roadside station. No one got in or got out. After waiting five or six minutes, to see if any one would change his mind, train crawled out again. Performance repeated few miles further on with same result.