REMARKABLE ADVENTURE.
A young lady some years ago thus related an adventure she met with in travelling. “After I had taken my seat one morning at Paddington, in an empty carriage, I was joined, just as the train was moving off, by a strange-looking young man, with remarkably long flowing hair. He was, of course, a little hurried, but he seemed besides to be so disturbed and wild that I was quite alarmed, for fear of his not being in his right mind, nor did his subsequent conduct at all reassure me. Our train was an express, and he inquired eagerly, at once, which was the first station we were advertised to stop. I consulted my Bradshaw and furnished him with the required information. It was Reading. The young man looked at his watch.
“‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I have but half-an-hour between me and, it may be, ruin. Excuse, therefore, my abruptness. You have, I perceive, a pair of scissors in your workbag. Oblige me, if you please, by cutting off all my hair.’
“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘it is impossible.’
“‘Madam,’ he urged, and a look of severe determination crossed his features; ‘I am a desperate man. Beware how you refuse me what I ask. Cut my hair off—short, close to the roots—immediately; and here is a newspaper to hold the ambrosial curls.’
“I thought he was mad, of course; and believing that it would be dangerous to thwart him, I cut off all his hair to the last lock.
“‘Now, madam,’ said he, unlocking a small portmanteau, ‘you will further oblige me by looking out of the window, as I am about to change my clothes.’
“Of course I looked out of the window for a very considerable time, and when he observed, ‘Madam, I need no longer put you to any inconvenience,’ I did not recognise the young man in the least.
“Instead of his former rather gay costume, he was attired in black, and wore a grey wig and silver spectacles; he looked like a respectable divine of the Church of England, of about sixty-four years of age; to complete that character, he held a volume of sermons in his hand, which—they appeared so to absorb him—might have been his own.
“‘I do not wish to threaten you, young lady,’ he resumed, ‘and I think, besides, that I can trust your kind face. Will you promise me not to reveal this metamorphosis until your journey’s end?’