time-piece. On his return, which was in less than five minutes, Johnny himself stepped into the vehicle, which was now crowded with passengers, and, in a few seconds, was rattling away at a rapid rate towards Edinburgh. The night was pitch dark, not a star twinkled; and it was not until Johnny arrived at his journey's end—that is, at Edinburgh—that he discovered his son was not in the coach, and had never been there at all. We will not attempt to describe Johnny's amazement and distress of mind on making this most extraordinary and most alarming discovery. They were dreadful. In great agitation, he inquired at every one of the passengers if they had not seen his son, and one and all denied they ever had. The thing was mysterious and perfectly inexplicable.
"I put the boy into the coach with my own hands," said Johnny Armstrong, in great perturbation, to the guard and half crying as he spoke.
"Very odd," said the guard.
"Very odd, indeed," said Johnny.
"Are you sure it was our coach, Mr. Armstrong?" inquired the guard.
The emphasis on the word our was startling. It evidently meant more than met the ear; and Johnny felt that it did so, and he was startled accordingly.
"Your coach?" he replied, but now with some hesitation of manner. "It surely was. What other coach could it be?"
"Why, it may have been the Glasgow coach," said the guard; "and I rather think it must have been. You have made a mistake, sir, be assured, and put the boy into the wrong coach. We start from the same place, and at the same hour, five minutes or so in or over."
The mention of this possibility, nay certainty—for Johnny had actually dispatched the boy to Glasgow—instantly struck him dumb. It relieved him, indeed, from
the misery arising from a dread of some terrible accident having happened the lad, but threw him into great tribulation as to his fate in Glasgow, without money or friends. But this being, after all, comparatively but a small affair, Johnny was now, what he had not been before, able to pay attention to minor things.