A dark October morning was brooding over the West End when he crossed Piccadilly to take his place outside the White Horse Cellar. Now, as on that distant day in April, when the car of rosy-fingered love had awaited him ignorant, the coaches stood one behind the other in a long line before the low-blind windows of the office. But how different was all else! To-day the lamps were lighted and flickered on wet pavements, the streets were windy and desolate, the day had barely broken above the wet roofs, and on all a steady rain was falling. The watermen went to and fro with sacks about their shoulders, and the guards, bustling from the office with their waybills and the late parcels, were short of temper and curt of tongue. The shivering passengers, cloaked to the eyes in boxcoats and wrap-rascals, climbed silently and sullenly to the roof, and there sat shrugging their shoulders to their ears. Vaughan, who had secured a place beside the driver, cast an eye on all, on the long dark vista of the street, on the few shivering passers; and he found the change fitting. Let it rain, let it blow, let the sun rise niggardly behind a mask of clouds! Let the world wear its true face! He cared not how discordantly the guard’s horn sounded, nor how the coachman swore at his cattle, nor how the mud splashed up, as two minutes after time they jostled and rattled and bumped down the slope and through the dingy narrows of Knightsbridge. Perhaps to please him, the rain fell more heavily as the light broadened and the coach passed through Kensington turnpike. The passengers, crouching inside their wraps, looked miserably from under dripping umbrellas on a wet Hammersmith, and a wetter Brentford. Now the coach ploughed through deep mud, now it rolled silently over a bed of chestnut or sycamore leaves which the first frost of autumn had brought down. Swish, swash, it splashed through a rivulet. It was full daylight now; it had been daylight an hour. And, at last, joyous sight, pleasant even to the misanthrope on the box-seat, not far in front, through a curtain of mist and rain, loomed Maidenhead—and breakfast. The up night-coach, retarded twenty minutes by the weather, rattled up to the door at the same moment. Vaughan foresaw that there would be a contest for seats at the table, and, without waiting for the ladder, he swung himself to the ground, and entered the house. Hastily doffing his streaming overcoats, he made for the coffee-room, where roaring fires and a plentiful table awaited the travellers. In two minutes he was served, and isolated by his gloomy thoughts and almost unconscious of the crowded room and the clatter of plates, he was eating his breakfast when his next-door neighbour accosted him. “Beg your pardon, sir,” he said in a meek voice. “Are you going to Bristol, sir?”