David followed where he fancied he had last seen the woman's face and caught himself just in time to keep from pitching over the edge of the platform.

Beyond that there was a pit of blackness.

Surely she had not gone there.
Two or three of the bells were still clanging, but with abated enthusiasm; from the dimly lighted platform, grayish-white in the ghostly flicker of the oil lamps, the crowd of hungry passengers was ebbing swiftly in its quest of food and drink; a last half-hearted bawling of the virtue to be found in the "hot steak _an_' liver'n onions at the Royal Alexandry" gave way to a comforting silence--a silence broken only by a growing clatter of dishes, the subdued wheezing of the engines, and the raucous voice of a train-man telling the baggage-man that the hump between his shoulders was not a head but a knot kindly tied there by his Creator to keep him from unravelling.

Even the promise of a fight--at least of a blow or two delivered in the gray gloom of the baggage-man's door--did not turn David from his quest.

When he returned, a few minutes later, two or three sympathetic friends were nursing the baggage-man back into consciousness.