He and John, with a good deal of hand luggage about them, and Tudor Maid between them, were driven into the Terminal one evening and there embarked on the Federal Express, Maid in a baggage car and John and Phillip in the Washington sleeper. John was in fine spirits; Phillip seemed depressed. In journeying it makes a difference whether the object of attraction is before or behind. CHAPTER XIII If you cross the Potomac at Washington and journey westward for about fifty miles――allowing for the circuitous course taken by the railroad――you will reach Melville Court House in a trifle under two hours; always supposing, however, that the eastbound train isn’t late at the junction, that there are no funeral parties aboard, and that the negroes whose duty it is to coal the tender just across the river have not gone off to Alexandria to spend the day. The first part of the journey lies through a country of low red-clay hills, clad with oak and rhododendron, a rather uninteresting country, where the farms have a mortgaged look and where unpainted structures cluster about the shedlike stations for no other apparent reason than that misery likes company. Yet away from the railroad and its artificial conditions soft stretches of hillside and meadow, interspersed with timbered creeks, hint of fairer and better things. “It’s a poorish farming country around here,” said Phillip. “You’ll notice a difference after awhile.” They had the smoking compartment to themselves and were lolling indolently upon the leather seats, their gazes fixed upon the panorama that swept undulatingly past the windows. “Well, it doesn’t look very enterprising hereabouts,” John responded. “I think if they’d haul away a few of the rotting wagons and farming implements that decorate the landscape the place would have a more prosperous appearance.” It was new country to him and he had already seen much that interested and amused him. It was difficult to realize that Washington, with its Northern airs, was but thirty miles behind them. With the crossing of the ice-filmed Potomac they had apparently passed from the world of hurry and bustle and impatience into one of languor, softness and relaxation. It seemed that with every mile they dropped behind them a year went, too. The difference had been made apparent by little incidents. Soon after they had entered the train the conductor discovered Phillip’s presence and had shaken hands, calling him Phil, and later taking his place beside him and relating news of things and persons for quite half an hour. He was introduced to John as Major Fairburn. After he had left them to gallantly help a lady and a little girl from the train, John learned that he had served through the war and had won his title of major for heroism with Pickett’s Division at Gettysburg. “But, great Scott,” exclaimed John, “isn’t he capable of better stuff than conductoring on a little old two-by-twice railroad like this?”