She had scant time to think, however, for scarce had it come to rest when Andreas Hausberger, little heeding, bundled them all unceremoniously into a third-class compartment; and before Linnet had leisure to recover her self-possession, the engine had uttered one wild discordant shriek, and with ringing of bells and rattlings of wheels in her ears, she found herself, willy-nilly, beyond hope of release, whirled along at the break-neck pace of what you and I know as an Austrian slow train, over the jolting rails, up the broad Inn valley. In spite of her terror—for she knew the railway as yet chiefly by hearing reports of collisions and accidents—Linnet enjoyed to the full that first steam-borne journey. She whirled past turreted towers like Hall and Volders, which to you and me commend themselves as the absolute quintessence of old-world quaintness, but which, to Linnet’s young eyes, accustomed only to St Valentin and the grassy Alps, envisaged themselves rather in glowing hues as the kingdoms of the world and all their glory. They had been late to start, and their drive from Mairhofen had been tolerably leisurely, so dusk was closing in when they arrived at Innsbruck. Oh, the bustle, the din, the whirling awe of that arrival! Electric lamps lighted up the broad Platz in front of the station; on either side rose great hotels, grander and more palatial than any buildings on earth Linnet’s poor little fancy had ever yet dreamed of. Not to one of these, however, of course, did Andreas Hausberger take his little troupe of minstrels. But even the humbler inn on the south side of the Theresien Strasse, to which they repaired on foot, bearing their boxes between them, seemed to Linnet’s inexperienced and impressionable eye a most princely caravanserai. After the noise and bustle in that busy railway junction, which made her brain whirl with the unaccustomed dizziness of a great city, the comparative rest and quiet of the Golden Eagle seemed a positive relief both of mind and body. That night she slept little. Her head swam with excitement; for this was the first step on her journey through the world, which might lead her perhaps at last to England. And in England, she thought to herself once or twice with a little thrill, who could tell but peradventure she might meet . . . Will Deverill? For she knew little as yet of how big the world is, and how long you may live in it, going to and fro, without necessarily knocking up against this one or that of its component units.