somewhat dry, they had taken the question of amusement into their own

hands; and the lecturer (along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist

clergyman, and a working-man's candidate, who made up his bodyguard) was

ultimately driven from the scene. Morris had not been present on that

fatal day; if he had, he would have recognized a certain fighting

glitter in his uncle's eye, and a certain chewing movement of his lips,

as old acquaintances. But even to the inexpert these symptoms breathed

of something dangerous.

'Well, well,' said Morris. 'I have no wish to bother you further till we

get to London.'

Joseph did not so much as look at him in answer; with tremulous hands

he produced a copy of the British Mechanic, and ostentatiously buried

himself in its perusal.

'I wonder what can make him so cantankerous?' reflected the nephew. 'I

don't like the look of it at all.' And he dubiously scratched his nose.

The train travelled forth into the world, bearing along with it the

customary freight of obliterated voyagers, and along with these old

Joseph, affecting immersion in his paper, and John slumbering over

the columns of the Pink Un, and Morris revolving in his mind a dozen

grudges, and suspicions, and alarms. It passed Christchurch by the sea,

Herne with its pinewoods, Ringwood on its mazy river. A little behind

time, but not much for the South-Western, it drew up at the platform of

a station, in the midst of the New Forest, the real name of which (in

case the railway company 'might have the law of me') I shall veil under

the alias of Browndean.

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