Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/495

he one afternoon train was due at Middleford, a small, straggling, and not very prosperous town, where terminated a branch line from a junction on the South-Western Railway—a line for which, after long-protracted opposition and delay, a grant had been obtained too late, traffic having merged in the direction of a neighbouring place.

"Middleford! Middleford!"

As the train drew up at the platform, one passenger only, a young man of about eight or nine and twenty, stepped out and stood for a few moments looking about him as if in some uncertainty. He was, in fact, debating with himself as to whether he would, after all, pay the chance visit he had gone there to make.

He had not gone by invitation other than was conveyed in the words: "Don't forget to look me up, if you chance to be anywhere in our neighbourhood, Meredith," spoken by a young fellow between whom and himself there had been some degree of of intimacy at the University, as the two parted to go their different ways. The usual words, not generally estimated above their value; and the idea of acting upon them had not occurred to Allan Meredith until he found himself stranded for some hours at the junction, and, turning over the leaves of Bradshaw, came upon the name of Middleford, and remembered that it was Laurence Verschoyle's place. Finding that it was not more than five or six miles from the junction, and that the train was just starting, he had, on the impulse of the moment, taken a ticket and jumped in.

He stood for another moment or two still hesitating, little imagining the influence his decision would have on his future life, and unable to account for his irresolution—a state of mind so unusual with him. He presently shook himself free of the feeling, and decided, since he had got so far, that he would go on. He inquired the way of the porter, who had been curiously eyeing him, and, leaving his bag at the station, set forth for the Priory.

"He inquired the way."

As he walked along the not very interesting country road, his thoughts reverted again to the man he was going to see. What had become of him since they had parted three years previously—Verschoyle, the first favourite of his set, who, with his good intellect, brilliant, witty, and versatile, had seemed capable of almost any mental feat? True, he had done nothing beyond give the impression that he could do a great deal if