The Day's Work

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leisure, England stood ready to give him all that money
and leisur^e could buy. That price paid, she would ask
no questions. He took his cheque-book and accumulated
things— warily at first, for he remembered that in
America things own the man. To his delight, he dis-
covered that in England he could put his belongings
under his feet ; for classes, ranks, and denominations of
people rose, as it were, from the earth, and silently and
discreetly took charge of his possessions. They had
been born and bred for that sole purpose— servants of
the cheque-book. When that was at an end they would
depart as mysteriously as they had come.

The impenetrability of this regulated life irritated him,
and he strove to learn something of the human side of
these people. He retired baffled, to be trained by his
menials. In America, the native demoralises the Eng-
lish servant. In England, the servant educates the
master. Wilton Sargent strove to learn all they taught
as ardently as his father had striven to wreck, before
capture, the railways of his native land; and it must
have been some touch of the old bandit railway blood
that bade him buy, for a song, Holt Hangars, whose
forty-acre lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in
velvet to the quadruple tracks of the Great Buchonian
Railway. Their trains flew by almost continuously,
with a bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of strong
wings at night. The son of Merton Sargent had good
right to be interested in them. He owned controlling
interests in several thousand miles of track,— not per-
manent way, —built on altogether different plans, where
locomotives eternally whistled for grade-crossings, and
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parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful design
skated round curves that the Great Buchonian would
have condemned as unsafe in a construction-line. From
the edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired metals
falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the
Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block
signals, buttressed with stone, and carried, high above
all possible risk, on a forty-foot embankment.

Left to himself, he would have builded a private car,
and kept it at the nearest railway-station, Amberley
Royal, five miles away. But those into whose hands he
had committed himself for his English training had
little knowledge of railways and less of private cars.
The one they knew was something that existed in the
scheme of things for their convenience. The other they
held to be " distinctly American " ; and, with the versa-
tility of his race, Wilton Sargent had set out to be just a
little more English than the English.

He succeeded to admiration. He learned not to redeco-
rate Holt Hangars, though he warmed it; to leave his
guests alone; to refrain from superfluous introductions;
to abandon manners of which he had great store, and to
hold fast by manner which can after labour be acquired.
He learned to let other people, hired for the purpose,
attend to the duties for which they were paid. He
learned— this he got from a ditcher on the estate— that
every man with whom he came in contact had his de-
creed position in the fabric of the realm, which position
he would do well to consult. Last mystery of all, he
learned to golf —well : and when an American knows the
innermost meaning of " Don't press, slow back, and
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AN ERROR IN

keep your eye on the ball," he is, for practical purposes,
denationalised.

His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines.
Was he interested in any conceivable thing in heaven
above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the
earth? Forthwith appeared at his table, guided by
those safe hands into which he had fallen, the very men
who had best said, done, written, explored, excavated,
built, launched, created, or studied that one thing-
herders of books and prints in the British Museum;
specialists in scarabs, cartouches, and dynasties Egyp-
tian; rovers and raiders from the heart of unknown
lands; toxicologists; orchid-hunters; monographers on
flint implements, carpets, prehistoric man, or early
Renaissance music. They came, and they played with
him. They asked no questions ; they cared not so much
as a pin who or what he was. They demanded only that
he should be able to talk and listen courteously. Their
work was done elsewhere and out of his sight.

There were also women.

"Never," said Wilton Sargent to himself, " has an
American seen England as I 'm seeing it"; and he
thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of the unre-
generate and blatant days when he would steam to office,
down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going
steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker
Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an Irish
washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his
guests had seen him then they would have said : * ' How
distinctly American!" and— Wilton did not care for
that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk,
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and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice.
He did not gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on
most of his enthusiasms, but he could not rid himself of
The Shibboleth. He would ask for the Worcestershire
sauce: even Howard, his immaculate butler, could not
break him of this.

It was decreed that he should complete his education
in a wild and wonderful manner, and, further, that I
should be in at that death.

Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars,
for the purpose of showing how well the new life fitted
him, and each time I had declared it creaseless. His
third invitation was more informal than the others, and
he hinted of some matter in which he was anxious for
my sympathy or counsel, or both. There is room for an
infinity of mistakes when a man begins to take liberties
with his nationality ; and I went down expecting things.
A seven-foot dog-cart and a groom in the black Holt Han-
gars livery met me at Amberley Royal. At Holt Han-
gars I was received by a person of elegance and true
reserve, and piloted to my luxurious chamber. There
were no other guests in the house, and this set me
thinking.

Wilton came into my room about half an hour before
dinner, and though his face was masked with a drop-
curtain of highly embroidered indifference, I could see
that he was not at ease. In time, for he was then almost
as difficult to move as one of my own countrymen, I
extracted the tale— simple in its extravagance, extrava-
gant in its simplicity. It seemed that Hackman of the
British Museum had been staying with him about ten
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AN ERROR IN

days before, boasting of scarabs. Hackman has a way
of carrying really priceless antiquities on his tie-ring and
in his trouser pockets. Apparently, he had intercepted
something on its way to the Boulak Museum which,
he said, was " a genuine Amen-Hotep— a queen's scarab
of the Fourth Dynasty. ' ' Now Wilton had bought from
Cassavetti, whose reputation is not above suspicion, a
scarab of much the same scarabeousness, and had left
it in his London chambers. Hackman at a venture,
but knowing Cassavetti, pronounced it an imposition.
There was long discussion— savant versus millionaire,
one saying: " But I know it cannot be " ; and the other:
u But I can and will prove it." Wilton found it neces-
sary for his soul's satisfaction to go up to town, then
and there, —a forty-mile run, —and bring back the scarab
before dinner. It was at this point that he began to cut
corners with disastrous results. Amberley Royal sta-
tion being five miles away, and putting in of horses a
matter of time, Wilton had told Howard, the immacu-
late butler, to signal the next train to stop ; and Howard,
who was more of a man of resource than his master
gave him credit for, had, with the red flag of the ninth
hole of the links which crossed the bottom of the lawn,
signalled vehemently to the first down -train; and it had
stopped. Here Wilton's account became confused. He
attempted, it seems, to get into that highly indignant
express, but a guard restrained him with more or less
force— hauled him, in fact, backwards from the window
of a locked carriage. Wilton must have struck the
gravel with some vehemence, for the consequences, he
admitted, were a free fight on the line^ in which he lost
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his hat, and was at last dragged into the guard's van
and set down breathless.

He had pressed money upon the man, and very fool-
ishly had explained everything but his name. This he
clung to, for he had a vision of tall head-lines in the
New York papers, and well knew no son of Merton Sar-
gent could expect mercy that side the water. The guard,
to Wilton's amazement, refused the money on the
grounds that this was a matter for the Company to at-
tend to. Wilton insisted on his incognito, and, there-
fore, found two policemen waiting for him at St. Botolph
terminus. When he expressed a wish to buy a new hat
and telegraph to his friends, both policemen with one
voice warned him that whatever he said would be used
as evidence against him; and this had impressed Wilton
tremendously.

" They were so infernally polite," he said. " If they
had clubbed me I would n't have cared; but it was,
' Step this way, sir,' and, * Up those stairs, please, sir,'
till they jailed me— jailed me like a common drunk, and
I had to stay in a filthy little cubby-hole of a cell all
night."

" That comes of not giving your name and not wiring
your lawyer," I replied. " What did you get? "

" Forty shillings, or a month," said Wilton, promptly,
— " next morning bright and early. They were work-
ing us off, three a minute. A girl in a pink hat — she
was brought in at three in the morning— got ten days.
I suppose I was lucky. I must have knocked his senses
out of the guard. He told the old duck on the bench
that I had told him I was a sergeant in the army, and
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that I was gathering beetles on the track. That comes
of trying to explain to an Englishman."

" And you?"

u Oh, I said nothing. I wanted to get out. I paid
my fine, and bought a new hat, and came up here be-
fore noon next morning. There were a lot of people in
the house, and I told 'em I 'd been unavoidably detained,
and then they began to recollect engagements elsewhere.
Hackman must have seen the fight on the track and
made a story of it. I suppose they thought it was dis-
tinctly American— confound 'em! It 's the only tune
in my life that I 've ever flagged a train, and I would n't
have done it but for that scarab. 'T would n't hurt
their old trains to be held up once in a while."

" Well, it 's all over now," I said, choking a little.
" And your name did n't get into the papers. It "is
rather transatlantic when you come to think of it."

" Over! " Wilton grunted savagely. " It 's only just
begun. That trouble with the guard was just common,
ordinary assault— merely a little criminal business.
The flagging of the train is civil, —infernally civil, —and
means something quite different. They 're after me for
that now."

"Who?"

" The Great Buchonian. There was a man in court
watching the case on behalf of the Company. I gave
him my name in a quiet corner before I bought my hat,
and— come to dinner now; I '11 show you the results
afterwards."

The telling of his wrongs had worked Wilton Sargent
into a very fine temper, and I do not think that my
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conversation soothed him. In the course of the dinner,
prompted by a devil of pure mischief, I dwelt with lov-
ing insistence on certain smells and sounds of New York
which go straight to the heart of the native in foreign
parts; and Wilton began to ask many questions about
his associates aforetime— men of the New York Yacht
Club, ^torm King, or the Eestigouche, owners of rivers,
ranches, and shipping in their playtime, lords of rail-
ways, kerosene, wheat, and cattle in their offices. When
the green mint came, I gave him a peculiarly oily and
atrocious cigar, of the brand they sell in the tessellated,
electric-lighted, with expensive-pictures-of-the-nude-
adorned bar of the Pandemonium, and Wilton chewed
the end for several minutes ere he lit it. The butler left
us alone, and the chimney of the oak-panelled dining-
room began to smoke.

" That 's another! " said he, poking the fire savagely,
and I knew what he meant. One cannot put steam-
heat in houses where Queen Elizabeth slept. The steady
beat of a night-mail, whirling down the valley, recalled
me to business. " What about the Great Buchonian? "
I said.

u Come into my study. That 's all — as yet.'*

It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspon-
dence, perhaps nine inches high, and it looked very
businesslike.

' ' You can go through it, ' ' said Wilton. * * Now I could
take a chair and a red flag and go into Hyde Park and
say the most atrocious things about your Queen, and
preach anarchy and all that, y' know, till I was hoarse,
and no one would take any notice. The Police—
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AN ERROR IN

damn 'em!— would protect me if I got into trouble.
But for a little thing like nagging a dirty little sawed-
off train,— running through my own grounds, too,— I
get the whole British Constitution down on me as if I
sold bombs. I don't understand it. "

"No more does the Great Buchonian— apparently."
I was turning over the letters. "Here 's the traffic
superintendent writing that it 's utterly incomprehen-
sible that any man should . . . Good heavens, Wilton,
you have done it! " I giggled, as I read on.

" What 's funny now? " said my host.

" It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the
three-forty Northern down."

' * I ought to know that ! They all had their knife into
me, from the engine-driver up."

" But it 's the three-forty— the Induna— surely you Ve
heard of the Great Buchonian's Induna! "

' ' How the deuce am I to know one train from another?
They come along about every two minutes."

" Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna— the
one train of the whole line. She 's timed for fifty-seven
miles an hour. She was put on early in the Sixties,
and she has never been stopped—"

" I know! Since William the Conqueror came over,
or King Charles hid in her smoke-stack. You 're as
bad as the rest of these Britishers. If she 's been run
all that while, it 's time she was nagged once or twice."

The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wil-
ton, and his small-boned hands were moving restlessly.

' ' Suppose you nagged the Empire State Express, or
the Western Cyclone? "

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44 Suppose I did. I know Otis Harvey— or used to.
I 'd send him a wire, and he 'd understand it was a
ground-hog case with me. That 's exactly what I told
this British fossil company here."

" Have you been answering their letters without legal
advice, then? "

" Of course I have."

" Oh, my Sainted Country! Go ahead, Wilton."

"I wrote 'em that I 'd be very happy to see their
president and explain to him in three words all about it;
but that would n't do. 'Seems their president must be
a god. He was too busy, and— well, you can read for
yourself —they wanted explanations. The station-mas-
ter at Amberley Royal— and he grovels before me, as a
rule— wanted an explanation, and quick, too. The head
sachem at St. Botolph's wanted three or four, and the
Lord High Mukkamuk that oils the locomotives wanted
one every fine day. I told 'em — I 've told lem about
fifty times— I stopped their holy and sacred train because
I wanted to board her. Did they think I wanted to feel
her pulse?"

" You did n't say that? "

1 * ' Feel her pulse ' ? Of course not. ' '

"No. 'Board her.'"

" What else could I say? "

" My dear Wilton, what is the use of Mrs. Sherborne,
and the Clays, and all that lot working over you for
four years to make an Englishman out of you, if the
very first time you 're rattled you go back to the
vernacular?"

u I 'm through with Mrs. Sherborne and the rest of
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the crowd. America 's good enough for me. What
ought I to have said? ' Please,' or ' thanks awf'ly,' or
how?"

There was no chance now of mistaking the man's
nationality. Speech, gesture, and step, so carefully
drilled into him, had gone away with the borrowed mask
of indifference. It was a lawful son of the Youngest
People, whose predecessors were the Red Indian. His
voice had risen to the high, throaty crow of his breed
when they labour under excitement. His close-set eyes
showed by turns unnecessary fear, annoyance beyond
reason, rapid and purposeless flights of thought, the
child's lust for immediate revenge, and the child's
pathetic bewilderment, who knocks his head against
the bad, wicked table. And on the other side, I knew,
stood the Company, as unable as Wilton to under-
stand.

" And I could buy their old road three times over,"
he muttered, playing with a paper-knife, and moving
restlessly to and fro.

" You did n't tell 'em that, I hope! "

There was no answer; but as I went through the let-
ters, I felt that Wilton must have told them many sur-
prising things. The Great Buchonian had first asked
for an explanation of the stoppage of their Induna, and
had found a certain levity in the explanation tendered.
It then advised " Mr. W. Sargent " to refer his solicitor
to their solicitor, or whatever the legal phrase is.

" And you did n't? " I said, looking up.

1 * No. They were treating me exactly as if I had
been a kid playing on the cable-tracks. There was not
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the least necessity for any solicitor. Five minutes'
quiet talk would have settled everything."

I returned to the correspondence. The Great Bu-
chonian regretted that, owing to pressure of business,
none of their directors could accept Mr. W. Sargent's
invitation to run down and discuss the difficulty. The
Great Buchonian was careful to point out that no ani-
mus underlay their action, nor was money their object.
Their duty was to protect the interests of their line, and
these interests could not be protected if a precedent were
established whereby any of the Queen's subjects could
stop a train in mid-career. Again (this was another
branch of the correspondence, not more than five heads
of departments being concerned), the Company admitted
that there was some reasonable doubt as to the duties
of express- trains in all crises, and the matter was open
to settlement by process of law till an authoritative
ruling was obtained— from the House of Lords, if
necessary.

" That broke me all up," said "Wilton, who was read-
ing over my shoulder. " I knew I 'd struck the British
Constitution at last. The House of Lords— my Lord!
And, anyway, I 'm not one of the Queen's subjects."

" Why, I had a notion that you 'd got yourself natu-
ralised."

Wilton blushed hotly as he explained that very many
things must happen to the British Constitution ere he
took out his papers.

" How does it all strike you? " he said. " Is n't the
Great Buchonian crazy? "

u I don't know. You 've done something that no one
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ever thought of doing before, and the Company don't
know what to make of it. I see they offer to send down
their solicitor and another official of the Company to
talk things over informally. Then here 's another letter
suggesting that you put up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned
with bottle-glass, at the bottom of the garden."

4 ' Talk of British insolence ! The man who recom-
mends that (he 's another bloated functionary) says that
I shall ' derive great pleasure from watching the wall
going up day by day ' ! Did you ever dream of such
gall? I 've offered 'em money enough to buy a new set
of cars and pension the driver for three generations ; but
that does n't seem to be what they want. They expect
me to go to the House of Lords and get a ruling, and
build walls between times. Are they all stark, raving
mad? One 'ud think I made a profession of flagging
trains. How in Tophet was I to know their old Induna
from a way-train? I took the first that came along,
and I 've been jailed and fined for that once already.''

u That was for slugging the guard."

" He had no right to haul me out when I was half -way
through a window."

" What are you going to do about it? "

" Their lawyer and the other official (can't they trust
their men unless they send 'em in pairs?) are coming
here to-night. I told 'em I was busy, as a rule, till after
dinner, but they might send along the entire directorate
if it eased 'em any."

Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is
the custom of the smaller American town, and not that
of England, where the end of the day is sacred to the
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owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent had
hoisted the striped flag of rebellion !

" Is n't it time that the humour of the situation began
to strike you, Wilton? " I asked.

" Where 's the humour of baiting an American citizen
just because he happens to be a millionaire— poor devil. ' '
He was silent for a little time, and then went on: "Of
course. Now I see ! " He spun round and faced me
excitedly. "It 's as plain as mud. These ducks are
laying their pipes to skin me."

" They say explicitly they don't want money! "

" That 's all a blind. So 's their addressing me as W.
Sargent. They know well enough who I am. They
know I 'm the old man's son. Why did n't I think of
that before? "

" One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of
the dome of St. Paul's and offered a reward to any Eng-
lishman who could tell you who or what Merton Sargent
had been, there would n't be twenty men in all London
to claim it."

"That 's their insular provincialism, then. I don't
care a cent. The old man would have wrecked the
Great Buchonian before breakfast for a pipe-opener.
My God, I '11 do it in dead earnest! I '11 show 'em that
they can't bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their
little tin-pot trains, and— I 've spent fifty thousand a
year here, at least, for the last four years. ' '

I was glad I was not his lawyer. I re-read the cor-
respondence, notably the letter which recommended
him— almost tenderly, I fancied— to build a fourteen-
foot brick wall at the end of his garden, and half-way
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through it a thought struck me which filled me with
pure joy.

The footman ushered in two men, frock-coated, grey-
trousered, smooth-shaven, heavy of speech and gait. It
was nearly nine o'clock, but they looked as newly come
from a bath. I could not understand why the elder and
taller of the pair glanced at me as though we had an
understanding; nor why he shook hands with an un-
English warmth.

* ' This simplifies the situation, ' ' he said in an under-
tone, and, as I stared, he whispered to his companion;
4 ' I fear I shall be of very little service at present. Per-
haps Mr. Folsom had better talk over the affair with
Mr. Sargent."

" That is what I am here for," said Wilton.

The man of law smiled pleasantly, and said that he
saw no reason why the difficulty should not be arranged
in two minutes' quiet talk. His air, as he sat down
opposite Wilton, was soothing to the last degree, and
his companion drew me up-stage. The mystery was
deepening, but I followed meekly, and heard Wilton
say, with an uneasy laugh :

"I 've had insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom.
Let 's settle it one way or the other, for heaven's sake! "

" Ah ! Has he suffered much from this lately? " said
my man, with a preliminary cough.

" I really can't say," I replied.

" Then I suppose you have only lately taken charge
here?"

" I came this evening. I am not exactly in charge of
anything."

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UI see. Merely to observe the course of events in
case—" He nodded.

" Exactly." Observation, after all, is my trade.

He coughed again slightly, and came to business.

"Now,— I am asking solely for information's sake,
—do you find the delusions persistent? "

"Which delusions?"

" They are variable, then ? That is distinctly curious,
because— but do I understand that the type of the delu-
sion varies? For example, Mr. Sargent believes that he
can buy the Great Buchonian."

" Did he write you that? "

" He made the offer to the Company— on a half -sheet
of note-paper. Now, has he by chance gone to the other
extreme, and believed that he is in danger of becoming
a pauper? The curious economy in the use of a half-
sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might
have flashed through his mind, and the two delusions
can coexist, but it is not common. As you must know,
the delusion of vast wealth— the folly of grandeurs, I
believe our friends the French call it— is, as a rule, per-
sistent, to the exclusion of all others."

Then I heard Wilton's best English voice at the end of
the study :

" My dear sir, I have explained twenty times already,
I wanted to get that scarab in time for dinner. Suppose
you had left an important legal document in the same
way?"

" That touch of cunning is very significant," my fel-
low-practitioner— since he insisted on it— muttered.

" I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you
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AN .ERROR IN

had only sent your president down to dinner here, I
could have settled the thing in half a minute. Why, I
could have bought the Buchonian from him while your
clerks were sending me this. ' ' Wilton dropped his hand
heavily on the blue-and-white correspondence, and the
lawyer started.

" But, speaking frankly," the lawyer replied, " it is,
if I may say so, perfectly inconceivable, even in the case
of the most important legal documents, that any one
should stop the three-forty express— the Induna— Our
Induna, my dear sir."

" Absolutely! " my companion echoed; then to me in
a lower tone: " You notice, again, the persistent delu-
sion of wealth. / was called in when he wrote us that.
You can see it is utterly impossible for the Company to
continue to run their trains through the property of a
man who may at any moment fancy himself divinely
commissioned to stop all traffic. If he had only referred
us to his lawyer— but, naturally, that he would not do,
under the circumstances. A pity— a great pity. He is
so young. By the way, it is curious, is it not, to note
the absolute conviction in the voice of those who are
similarly afflicted, —heartrending, I might say, —and the
inability to follow a chain of connected thought. ' '

" I can't see what you want," Wilton was saying to
the lawyer.

" It need not be more than fourteen feet high— a really
desirable structure, and it would be possible to grow pear-
trees on the sunny side." The lawyer was speaking in
an unprofessional voice. " There are few things pleas-
anter than to watch, so to say, one's own vine and fig-
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tree in full bearing. Consider the profit and amusement
you would derive from it. If you could see your way
to doing this, we could arrange all the details with your
lawyer, and it is possible that the Company might bear
some of the cost. I have put the matter, I trust, in a
nutshell. If you, my dear sir, will interest yourself in
building that wall, and will kindly give us the name of
your lawyers, I dare assure you that you will hear no
more from the Great Buchonian."

" But why am I to disfigure my lawn with a new
brick wall?"

" Grey flint is extremely picturesque."

" Grey flint, then, if you put it that way. "Why the
dickens must I go building towers of Babylon just be-
cause I have held up one of your trains— once? "

" The expression he used in his third letter was that
he wished to ' board her,' " said my companion in my
ear. " That was very curious— a marine delusion im-
pinging, as it were, upon a land one. What a marvellous
world he must move in— and will before the curtain
falls. So young, too— so very young! "

" Well, if you want the plain English of it, I 'm
damned if I go wall-building to your orders. You can
fight it all along the line, into the House of Lords and
out again, and get your rulings by the running foot if
you like," said Wilton, hotly. " Great heavens, man, I
only did it once! "

" We have at present no guarantee that you may not

do it again ; and, with our traffic, we must, in justice to

our passengers, demand some form of guarantee. It

must not serve as a precedent. All this might hare been

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AN ERROR IN

saved if you had only referred us to your legal repre-
sentative. ' ' The lawyer looked appealingly around the
room. The dead-lock was complete.

44 Wilton," I asked, "may I try my hand now ? "

4 ' Anything you like, ' ' said Wilton. ' ' It seems I can't
talk English. I won't build any wall, though." He
threw himself back in his chair.

44 Gentlemen," I said deliberately, for I perceived that
the doctor's mind would turn slowly, " Mr. Sargent has
very large interests in the chief railway systems of his
own country."

44 His own country ? " said the lawyer.

44 At that age ? " said the doctor.

44 Certainly. He inherited them from his father, Mr.
Sargent, who was an American. ' '

4 'And proud of it," said Wilton, as though he had
been a Western Senator let loose on the Continent for
the first time.

4 ' My dear sir, ' ' said the lawyer, half rising, ' ' why did
you not acquaint the Company with this fact— this vital
fact— early in our correspondence ? We should have
understood. We should have made allowances."

44 Allowances be damned. Am I a Bed Indian or a
lunatic?"

The two men looked guilty.

44 If Mr. Sargent's friend had told us as much in the
beginning," said the doctor, very severely, '4much
might have been saved." Alas I I had made a life's
enemy of that doctor.

44 1 had n't a chance," I replied. 44 Now, of course,
[356]

THE FOURTH DIMENSION

you can see that a man who owns several thousand
miles of line, as Mr. Sargent does, would be apt to treat
railways a shade more casually than other people."

"Of course; of course. He is an American; that
accounts. Still, it was the Induna; but I can quite
understand that the customs of our cousins across the
water differ in these particulars from ours. And do
you always stop trains in this way in the States, Mr.
Sargent?"

" I should if occasion ever arose; but I 've never had
to yet. Are you going to make an international com-
plication of the business? "

' ' You need give yourself no further concern whatever
in the matter. "We see that there is no likelihood of this
action of yours establishing a precedent, which was the
only thing we were afraid of. Now that you under-
stand that we cannot reconcile our system to any sud-
den stoppages, we feel quite sure that—"

"I sha'n't be staying long enough to flag another
train," Wilton said pensively.

" You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen
across the— ah— big pond, you call it? "

" M), sir. The ocean— the North Atlantic Ocean.
It 's three thousand miles broad, and three miles deep
in places. I wish it were ten thousand."

" I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think
it is every Englishman's duty once in his life to study
the great branch of our Anglo-Saxon race across the
ocean," said the lawyer.

" If ever you come over, and care to flag any train
[357]

AN ERROR IN

on my system, I '11— I '11 see you through," said
Wilton.

" Thank you— ah, thank you. You 're very kind.
I 'm sure I should enjoy myself immensely."

u We have overlooked the fact," the doctor whispered
to me, ' ' that your friend proposed to buy the Great
Buchonian."

" He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million
dollars— four to five million pounds," I answered,
knowing that it would be hopeless to explain.

" Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great
Buchonian is not in the market."

" Perhaps he does not want to buy it now."

" It would be impossible under any circumstances,"
said the doctor.

" How characteristic!" murmured the lawyer, re-
viewing matters in his mind. u I always understood
from books that your countrymen were in a hurry.
And so you would have gone forty miles to town and
back— before dinner— to get a scarab? How intensely
American ! But you talk exactly like an Englishman,
Mr. Sargent."

" That is a fault that can be remedied. There 's only
one question I 'd like to ask you. You said it was in-
conceivable that any man should stop a train on your
road?"

" And so it is— absolutely inconceivable."

" Any sane man, that is? "

uThat is what I meant, of course. I mean, with
excep— "

"Thank you."

[358]

THE FOURTH DIMENSION

The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he
was about to fill a pipe, took one of my cigars instead,
and was silent for fifteen minutes.

Then said he: u Have you got a list of the Southamp-
ton sailings on you? "

**********

Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars,
the faultless gravel drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of
Holt Hangars runs a river called the Hudson, whose
unkempt banks are covered with the palaces of those
wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where
the hoot of the Haverstraw brick-barge-tug answers the
howl of the locomotive on either shore, you shall find,
with a complete installation of electric light, nickel-
plated binnacles, and a calliope attachment to her
steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going
steam-yacht Columbia, lying at her private pier, to take
to his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an
hour,— and the barges can look out for themselves,—
Wilton Sargent, American.

[359]

MY SUNDAY AT HOME

MY SUNDAY AT HOME

H the Red Slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,

They know not well the subtle ways
I keep and pass and turn again.

EMERSON.

IT was the unreproducible slid r, as he said this
was his * ' f y-ist ' ' visit to England, that told me he
was a New-Yorker from New York; and when, in the
course of our long, lazy journey westward from "Water-
loo, he enlarged upon the beauties of his city, I, profess-
ing ignorance, said no word. He had, amazed and de-
lighted at the man's civility, given the London porter a
shilling for carrying his bag nearly fifty yards; he had
thoroughly investigated the first-class lavatory compart-
ment, which the London and Southwestern sometimes
supply without extra charge; and now, half -awed, half-
contemptuous, but wholly interested, he looked out upon
the ordered English landscape wrapped in its Sunday
peace, while I watched the wonder grow upon his face.
Why were the cars so short and stilted? Why had every
other freight-car a tarpaulin drawn over it ? What wages
would an engineer get now? Where was the swarming