He was a man considerably older than his questioner, with long, nervous face, and thick black hair streaked with grey.

His fingers were bony, his complexion, for a soldier, curiously sallow, and notwithstanding his height, which was considerable, he was awkward, at times almost uncouth.

His voice was hard and unsympathetic, and his contributions to the tea-table talk had been almost negligible.
"I was up until two o'clock, as it happened," he replied, "but I knew nothing about the matter until it was brought to my notice officially." Helen Fairclough, who was doing the honours for Lady Cranston, her absent hostess, assumed the slight air of superiority to which the circumstances of the case entitled her.
"I heard it distinctly," she declared; "in fact it woke me up.

I hung out of the window, and I could hear the engine just as plainly as though it were over the golf links." The young subaltern sighed.
"Rotten luck I have with these things," he confided.

"That's three times they've been over, and I've neither heard nor seen one.