Away ambles the Porter, leaving me with that orphaned sort of feeling which a luggageless Englishman experiences; it is pouring cats and dogs; I am dead beat; I creep into the dark omnibus. I find myself quite alone. I wait impatiently--a quarter of an hour--twenty-five minutes--still no Porter; I am famished; to distract myself, I peer through the door, whence I can discern the messy vista of the railway-station in the rain; it's lucky I do so; for there I behold my own portmanteau, with its huge purple stripe, being hauled away on the back of a railway-man, followed by an alien Hotel Porter, _not mine_, doing nothing: they are always doing nothing. To rush out indignantly, seize my box, defy the brigands, and carry it back myself, seemed the work of an instant. Drenched and gasping, I find myself once more outside; the Porter of the Grand Hotel Du Lac is at my heels, furious and impertinent. "Dis, _not_ your loggosh: other shentleman's loggosh." He seized the portmanteau, and a struggle would certainly have ensued, when my own Hotel Porter appeared on the scene triumphant, with a regiment of station-men carrying one small tin box. "What you do, Sar; see _here_, your loggosh!" The tin box belonged to a commercial-traveller, who was bound for the Hotel Du Lac. I am too exhausted to curse, and leave the rival Porters to fight it out themselves, after paying off the ragged regiment of Station-men. On the drive to the Hotel, the Porter tries to propitiate me. "Pity shentlemans like you, Sar, fetch de loggosh. I tell you, better leave it to me, Sar. You see, _I_ get your loggosh. Dat bizley Porter of De Hotel Du Lac, he change de empfangschein; but I sweep it from him, and bring to de 'Bus"--"'Bus" was good--and then he laughed! [Illustration: "Pity shentlemans like you, Sar, retchistar de loggosh."] I never saw the brute again until the time of my departure; I had taken a carriage to the Station this time, thinking thereby to avoid the Porter-omnibus. I had registered my traps myself, and was looking out for some one to carry them to the den in which you are penned till the train arrives, when, lo! the chucker-out! smiling and bowing as if he had never seen me before--"Is better I retchistar de loggosh, Sar; pity shentlemans like you, Sar, retchistar de loggosh." I turn on my heel with an imprecation which "Ingleese-spikers" understand. But he still waits there, smiling, and expecting to be tipped, Let him wait. So much for the Omnibus-Porter--at once the Gamp and Undertaker of my Grand Hotel existence.