"You are quite mistaken, Uncle Nelson, dreams have been made the subject of scientific research." "Oh, poppycock! You’ll be telling fortunes in a tea cup next, ha, ha, ha!" "I am glad you are amused, Uncle Nelson." "I am—it’s rich—ha, ha, ha, ha!—Ha, ha, ha, ha! Thurston, will you oblige me, and tell when there’s anything to look at beside these interminable forests? I’m going to nap a little." Lord Canning resumed his watch at the window. "Beautiful forests," he thought, "for the most part untouched and untrammelled. We seem to be plunging deeper and deeper into a virgin region. I feel strangely expectant, as though something were awaiting me there. Something that I have hitherto missed in my life—my sober, colorless life—awaiting me there. If I should tell Uncle Nelson this, he would ask me what I had eaten for lunch." In a little while he became conscious that the train was slackening speed and felt the exhilaration, of most people, at the idea of being transported higher than the ordinary level. "Uncle Nelson!" "Yes." "There is something else." "What?" "Clouds—ha, ha, ha, ha!" Lord Stafford looked disgustedly out at the scurrying white masses. "Do you want h’anything, your Lordship?" "It’s about time you showed up, Flash. Unstrap that plaid—it’s beastly cold." "It h’is, your Lordship—compared to the ’eat in New York," carefully tucking Lord Stafford into the plaid. Flash was a young fellow, of the ordinary English cockney type. The train labored on painfully up into the heart of the mountains. Lord Stafford slept while his nephew smoked and mused, watching the clouds, barely perceptible now in the fading light. They felt a jerk, the train stopped suddenly. Flash put his head in, "We’re a h’our and a ’alf late, your Lordship. We won’t h’arrive until h’eight o’clock." "What an infernal nuisance." "H’any h’orders, your Lordship?" "Get out!" When they finally arrived it was pitch black night, no moon nor stars. The rude little station was lit by torches flaming in the mist and wind. Beyond, impenetrable darkness. A storm was brewing over the mountains. Haller’s face, as he greeted the travellers with one of his contortions, looked weird in the torchlight. They followed him out to the wagon, in which they sank with a sigh of relief. The trip, with the delay, had been tedious. Haller whipped the ponies up briskly. The wagon careered recklessly from side to side as they drove, and the wind drove the mist into their faces. "I suppose you know your road, my good man?" said Lord Stafford. "There’s no risk of falling over a precipice or anything of that kind, is there? It’s so confoundedly black." Haller chuckled. "Them ponies know the’re way—the’ve been bred up in these parts. I’d trust them sooner’n myself." "Indeed!" said Lord Canning. "Is this our destination?" asked Lord Stafford, as they stopped at the landing.