The Mail-Guard's Story1
Reader, have you ever been obliged to wait at a small country railway station for an early train? If you have not, you have not experienced the ne plus ultra of human misery. But when, as was my case last year, you have left a jolly party, driven five miles to catch the mail at 2 a.m., and found on your arrival at the station, not that the train had gone, for that would be a relief, but that you had mistaken the time, and had got three quarters of an hour to wait, your lot is not an enviable one. So thought I as I stamped up and down the ill-lit platform, and gazed into the darkness beyond, which was only broken by the dim and misty light of the “distance” signal, some hundred yards down the line. The occasional barking of a house dog alone broke the stillness, except when the autumn breeze played in a wailing tone on the telegraphic wires over my head. As I paced up and down to warm my feet, I felt regularly “savage” that the well meant solicitation of the company assembled at the Beeches had induced me to forego that last waltz with Minnie Cameron, and hurry to the station.
I had been staying for the past fortnight at the house of a relative, and what with shooting, fishing, and (must I confess it?) occasionally flirting with the blue-eyed Minnie, the days had passed rapidly; and when recalled to London by my father’s business-like letter, which hinted at some impending calamity connected with our firm, I could hardly believe that my leave had so nearly expired. There was no help for it, and go I must. My relatives appeared as sorry as I was when I announced my intended departure, and I fancy I could discern traces of tears in Minnie’s sunny eyes as I bade her farewell in the hall that evening, bearing with me a shining tress of her flaxen hair, and a hasty kiss, as… Read More