BY-LAW No. 7.
I have only two companions—the one a good-natured-looking, middle-aged gentleman with a mild benevolent expression, strangely at variance with the nervous restlessness of his eyes; the other a grim taciturn man, who has been absorbed in his paper ever since the train left Edinburgh en route for the South. They had got in together, and were evidently travelling companions. Rather a queerly assorted couple; for from their dress and general appearance there could be no doubt but that their stations in life were widely apart. What could they be? Master and servant? Evidently not; for the humbler of the two seemed to have control of all their travelling arrangements. A detective and his prisoner? I think not; for the one looks too much at ease to have a troubled conscience; and the other, though evidently in command, treats his companion with more deference than is compatible with the conscious power of a captor.
My speculations on this point have filled up a gap in the journey. Having read all the war telegrams in the morning paper, which I know I will find contradicted in the evening editions when I reach London; and having watched the telegraph wires gliding up and down beside the carriage-window, anon disappearing suddenly into space, only to reappear as suddenly to continue their monotonous up-and-down motion, I am beginning to weary of this, and if neither of my companions volunteers a remark, I must do something to force a conversation.
We are past Dunbar by this time, and are fast approaching Berwick. I have been vainly trying to catch the restless eyes of my apparently more companionable companion. He is now closing them, and evidently settling down for a quiet nap. My more taciturn friend has never taken his attention off his paper; he must either be a very slow reader, or having exhausted the news, he must have fallen on the advertisements. I offer him my paper. He takes it with a bow, giving me his own in exchange—The Banffshire Gazette. No news to be got out of that after having exhausted The Scotsman. I am soon reduced to the births, marriages, and deaths. Much interested to know that the wife of Hugh Macdonald stone-mason has presented him with a son; also to hear that Mrs M‘Queen is dead; and the nursery rhyme I sometimes hear my wife repeating to our boys occurs to me, and I mentally inquire, ‘How did she die?’ The announcement does not, however, enlighten me on that point; though it is easy to guess, seeing that it contains the further information that she departed this life at one hundred and one years of age, and is deeply regretted. The latter assertion I fear is only a conventional fib, for I find in a paragraph announcing her death as a local centenarian, that she had great possessions, which have fallen to her nearest surviving relative, a great-grand-nephew.
My friend opposite is fairly off to sleep. Quite clear that he has nothing on his conscience. The other is as deep in The Scotsman as he was erewhile in his own paper. I can’t stand this any longer. Talk I must. The Banffshire Gazette is published in the county town bearing the same name; so I see my way to an opening.
‘You come from Banff, I presume? You must have been travelling all night? No wonder our friend here is worn out.’
‘We have come from Banff,’ replies my friend, with no trace of the churl in his voice or manner that his appearance would lead me to expect. ‘We have come from Banff; but we have not travelled all night. Our governor makes it a point never to over-fatigue any of his patients. It’s part of his system; so we broke our journey at Edinburgh.’
His patients! I would as soon have suspected my opposite neighbour of being a criminal as an invalid.
‘Indeed,’ I say. ‘Might I inquire what is his complaint?’
My taciturn friend touches his head in a mysterious way, and I am just in time to stop a low whistle indicative of surprise, and to turn it into another ‘Indeed.’