Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up,
there is a lapse of seven years.
CHAPTER VIII.
BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.
Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10 a.m.
Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate the guard
as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying himself in
a quiet way--smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a bird's-eye
view now and again at the landscape that was flying past him at the rate
of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to speculate as to his
profession would have hesitated to set him down as a military man, even
had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in white letters on a black
portmanteau which protruded half-way from under his seat, rendered any
such speculation needless. He must have been three or four-and-forty
years old, judging from the lines about his mouth and eyes, but in some
other respects he looked considerably younger. He wore neither beard nor
whiskers, but his short hair, and his thick, drooping moustache were
both jet black, and betrayed as yet, thanks either to Nature or Art,
none of those straggling streaks of silver which tell so plainly of the
advance of years. He had a clear olive complexion, a large aquiline nose
and deep-set eyes, piercing and full of fire, under a grand sweep of
eyebrow.
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