“Not of me, you can’t,” snapped the doctor. “If you want to make any inquiries I must refer you to Mr. Vernon’s counsel, Judge Danvers. I’ve nothing more to say. Excuse me, sir. I have patients to attend to. My time’s not my own. Good-morning. John, show the gentleman out.” John was just the very man for that kind of duty, and Major Montague went down the front steps with the abiding assurance that he had never been turned out of any other house so politely and ceremoniously in all his life. He ought to have been a good judge of that sort of thing too. Meantime, Bar and Val found themselves dashing away across country at the best speed of the Eastern express train, and they would have been more or less than boys if they had not set themselves at once to work on a general investigation of the character of their fellow-passengers. Val might scarcely have been accurate or thorough, but there was something closely approaching professional skill in Bar’s observations. A little in front of them, across the passage, a double seat had been taken possession of, for the car was not crowded, by a somewhat feeble-looking but very nice, middle-aged lady and one of the brightest, prettiest girls, of fifteen years or thereabouts, that either of the boys had ever seen. That was all as it should be, but at the very first stopping-place, the car was entered by a flashily-dressed young man, of middle height, who took a brief survey of the passengers, from the door, and then walked deliberately forward and set himself down in the vacant seat by the side of the lady. There was nothing in the established usages of railway traveling which should have made a positive crime of this, but there was something in the way the newcomer gazed at the fresh-faced girl opposite him which brought the blood to the face of Val Manning. “The impudent scamp!” he muttered to Bar. “Why couldn’t he have found another seat?” “Keep still a bit,” said Bar. “I know what he’s up to, or I’m greatly mistaken.” If the ladies themselves were disturbed by the presence of the stranger, they were not disposed to make any public exhibition of their disgust. It is true that the elder seemed to become more interested than before in the scenery through which the train was passing, and the younger took a sudden plunge into a book which had been lying neglected on her lap. “That’s just what he wants,” said Bar to Val. “Anything to keep their eyes off him. There, that’s it. He’s a good deal clumsier than old Prosper.” It happened that, a few seats further on, a party of four gentlemen were sitting together in animated conversation, and the outer one of the two who were facing Bar and Val was a man of unusual size, though not of a particularly intellectual appearance. He had not been paying any attention, that Val had noticed, to the operations of the flashy stranger, but now he suddenly exclaimed, or so it seemed: “Keep your hand out of her pocket.”