M'Caskey read this over three several times, dwelling each time on the same places, and then he arose and walked leisurely up and down the room. He then took out his guide-book and saw that a train started for St. Jean de Maurienne at six, arriving at eight,--a short train, not in correspondence with any other; and as the railroad ended there, the remainder of the journey, including the passage of Mont Cenis, must be performed by carriage. Of course, it was in this short interval the feat must be accomplished, if at all. The waiter announced “his Excellency's” dinner while he thus cogitated, and he descended and dined heartily; he even ordered a bottle of very rare chambertin, which stood at eighteen francs in the _carte_. He sipped his wine at his ease; he had full an hour before the train started, and he had time for reflection as well as enjoyment. “You are to possess yourself of this,” muttered he, reading from a turned-down part of the note. “Had you been writing to any other man in Europe, Signor Conte Caffarelli, you would have been profuse enough of your directions; you would have said, 'You are to shoot this fellow; you are to waylay him; you are to have him attacked and come to his rescue,' and a-score more of such-like contrivances; but--to me--to me--there was none of this. It was just as Buonaparte said to Desaix at Marengo, 'Ride through the centre,'--he never added how. A made man! I should think so! The man has been made some years since, sir. Another bottle, waiter, and mind that it be not shaken. Who was it--I can't remember--stopped a Russian courier with despatches for Constantinople? Ay, to be sure, it was Long Wellesley; he told me the story himself. It was a clumsy trick, too; he upset his sledge in the snow, and made off with the bags, and got great credit for the feat at home.” “The train will start in a quarter of an hour, sir,” said the waiter. “Not if I am not ready, my good fellow,” said the Major,--“though now I see nothing to detain me, and I will go.” Alone in his first-class, he had leisure to think over his plans. Much depended on who might be the courier. He knew most of them well, and speculated on the peculiar traits of this or that. “If it be Bromley, he will have his own _calèche_; Airlie will be for the cheap thing, and take the diligence; and Poynder will be on the look-out for some one to join him, and pay half the post-horses and all the postilions. There are half a dozen more of these fellows on this 'dodge,' but I defy the craftiest of them to know me now;” and he took out a little pocket-glass, and gazed complacently at his features. “Colonel Moore Chamberlayne, A.D.C., on his way to Corfu, with despatches for the Lord High Commissioner. A very soldierlike fellow, too,” added he, arranging his whiskers, “but, I shrewdly suspect, a bit of a Tartar. Yes, that's the ticket,” added he, with a smile at his image in the glass,--“despatches of great importance for Storks at Corfu.”