"Le mettre en consigne pendant quelques jours, monsieur," cried the foreigner, eagerly pouncing on Felix. "Malheureusement je ne puis pas dire--je ne sais pas pour quel temps--combien faut-il payer maintenant?" Felix turned good-naturedly to him. "You want to cloak it, and you do not know for how long?" he said in French. "That's all right, you take a ticket now, nothing to pay, and when you want it out, you produce the ticket and pay so much for each day." The man was delighted. "I am indebted to you, sir, I am truly. I was told my English was enough to take me through; but it breaks down at every turn. You speak French admirably--that is not so with all your countrymen--hein?" "No," said Felix, "we are not great linguists, taken as a nation. But I have lived abroad." "Ah! By chance now--you speak German also?" "Assez bien, monsieur." The stranger literally clutched him. Was he at liberty? Would he come up to the hotel and make terms for him? Could he do some translating--a letter, the sense of which he could not discover, though he had looked out all the words in a dictionary? Felix explained that he was anything but at leisure, but that he had to await the arrival of a goods train, and while waiting was very glad to translate the letter in question into comprehensible French. After safely consigning the luggage, which, so the stranger said, consisted of models of machinery, they repaired to the bar--since the weird regulations of England forbade one to smoke in the waiting-room--and Felix made all plain to the perplexed inventor, who described himself as a Russian,--an engineer employed in a vast mining enterprise in Siberia. He had perfected an invention for the ventilation of deep-level mines, by which he hoped to make his fortune. He had appointed to meet, at Basingstoke, the manager of one of the largest Welsh mines, who happened to be returning from abroad, and promised to break his journey there, in order to have an interview. He launched into a description of his invention, and Felix, who had always had a fancy for machinery, grew deeply interested. Finally, the eager inventor extracted a promise from his new friend to come to supper with him at the hotel, though Felix owned with regret that he had no decent clothes; and they parted for a time with a mutual desire to meet again.