Old hands, who have fed at their leisure in callous indifference to all alarms, lounge about in great content, and a group of sheep farmers, having endeavoured in vain, after one tasting, to settle the merits of a new dip, take a glance in the "Hielant" quarter, and adjourn the conference once more to the refreshment-room.

Groups of sportsmen discuss the prospects of to-morrow in detail, and tell stories of ancient twelfths, while chieftains from London, in full Highland dress, are painfully conscious of the whiteness of their legs.

A handful of preposterous people who persist in going south when the world has its face northwards, threaten to complain to headquarters if they are not sent away, and an official with a loud voice and a subtle gift of humour intimates that a train is about to leave for Dundee.
During this time wonderful manoeuvres have been executed on the lines of rail opposite the platform.

Trains have left with all the air of a departure and disappeared round the curve outside the station, only to return in fragments.

Half a dozen carriages pass without an engine, as if they had started on their own account, break vans that one saw presiding over expresses stand forsaken, a long procession of horse boxes rattle through, and a saloon carriage, with people, is so much in evidence that the name of an English Duke is freely mentioned, and every new passage relieves the tedium of the waiting.
Out of all this confusion trains begin to grow and take shape, and one, with green carriages, looks so complete that a rumour spreads that the Hielant train has been made up and may appear any minute in its place.
The sunshine beating through the glass roof, the heat of travel, the dust of the station, the moving carriages with their various colours, the shouts of railway officials, the recurring panics of fussy passengers, begin to affect the nerves.