Still we missed the tide and had to wait all day outside Aberdeen, and that was very tantalising. I had made up my mind to stay the night at a hotel, and then suddenly the Daylight Saving Bill made me an unlooked-for present of an hour, and it was possible to catch the 8.30 night train for London. An extremely cautious Customs Officer looked at my things, but said naught, and he insisted on my unpacking the samovar which I was bringing home. When he saw it, he remarked: “It’ll be something for taking pictures?” He said this because I had put in the chimney a number of pictures and maps to keep them from crumpling. The doctor when he came thought we might be detained in quarantine for a week. The captain had a sore throat. He must go to a hospital and have a culture of it taken. “A lot of bally rot, I call it,” the captain kept repeating, and tears were almost trickling from his eyes. The doctor, however, let me go, and I sent a small boy to fetch a taxi. The taxi appeared at about 8.25 P. M., and I just got to the station in time. There was half a minute. “Take it easy, you’ve plenty of time,” said a porter to me, characteristically. All my possessions were labelled, and the doors of the guard’s pan opened in the moving train and accepted the extra bags. I sped along through a throng of women waving good-bye to soldiers, and got into a carriage as by miracle. There for a moment I paused and considered. What a contrast to Russian ways, the possibility of getting off by a train with such a hairbreadth of margin. The contrast was flattering to ourselves. Soon, however, came another contrast, less flattering. Two drunken men got in. I was feeling particularly tender to everything English, and could not possibly have felt critical or wished to grumble. But one of the drunken men wanted to fight. He stood up and held on a minute to the window-strap, looked at me vaguely, and exclaimed: “I pronounce my ultimatio.” “What is it?” I asked cheerfully. “Self-defence,” he replied, and then relapsed into his seat with a bump. So I was home. And all night long the train rushed on to London. THE END PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ Through Russian Central Asia _Illustrated, $2.25_ This book describes a journey by the author through Russian Central Asia. Among the topics which the author touches upon are the Russian pioneers, Mohammedanism and its characteristic expression, the colored tribes, Russian rule, the expansion of the Russian empire and the question of danger to India. The volume tells of much tramping, of wayside experiences, of sights in the desert and nights under the Asian stars or in the tents of the nomads. “A delightful book.... Always and everywhere Stephen Graham has the gift of transferring his knowledge of Russia to the reader’s heart and brain.”--_Chicago Herald._