When Cheyne had packed his portmanteau he took it and a hatbox down the steep staircase, carrying at the same time his letters in his teeth. He wore a low-crowned soft hat, instead of his ordinary silk one. He jumped into the street, and having thrust his letters into a pillar-post, hailed the first empty hansom and drove away to the railway-station.

Either his watch must have been slow or he must have looked at the wrong line of figures in the time-table, for when he got to the station they told him the train was on the point of starting, instead of having, as he had calculated, a good ten minutes to spare.

He took a first-class single ticket to Bankleigh, the nearest railway-station to Silver Bay. Then, with his portmanteau in one hand and his hatbox in the other, he dashed along the way leading to the platform from which the train for Bankleigh starts. The door was shut against him. The train had not yet started, but the time was up. The next train did not go till evening, which meant getting into a small unknown town long past midnight, a thing no one cares to do, particularly when he does not know even the name of a hotel or the hotel in it.

The gate was closed against him. The man refused to open the gate. The gate was five feet high, and Cheyne about six. Cheyne raised his hatbox and portmanteau over the barrier and let them fall. The man inside thought the traveller merely wished to get rid of the trouble of carrying his luggage any longer. Instantly Cheyne stepped on the lowest cross-rail of the gate, bent his chest over the top-rail of the gate, seized the ticket-taker by the leather waist-belt, and lifted him slowly over the gate. When he had deposited the ticket-taker safely on the ground he thrust half-a-crown into the man's hand, vaulted the gate, and taking up his portmanteau and hatbox, ran for a seat, and succeeded in scrambling into a carriage just as the train was in motion, and before the astonished but grateful ticket-taker could climb over the gate and regain the platform. Two or three of the porters had seen the feat, but it was not their duty to interfere. One of the guards saw it also; but having been, when younger, something of an athlete, and admiring the way in which the thing had been done, affected not to have seen it, and absolutely held the carriage-door open for Cheyne when he was getting in.

At the first station where the train stopped, the guard who had seen Cheyne lift the man over the gate, thrust his head into Cheyne's compartment, there being no one else in it, and said:

"That was a very neat trick sir, very. It isn't often we see a thing like that nowadays, sir."

"Confound it!" thought Cheyne, "this fellow must have his tip too."

He put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a coin.

The guard saw what the passenger was doing, drew back, and said:

"No, sir; nothing for me, sir, thank you. It's not often nowadays we see a trick like that done, and I'd give a trifle myself to see it done again. But 'tisn't everyone, or half everyone, could do it."

And he moved along the platform, shaking his head to himself with the intelligent approval of one who knows a good deal of the difficulties in the performance of the feat which he applauded.

The train took eight hours to get to Bankleigh, but at last it drew up at that station, and Cheyne alighted.

It was then dusk, and the traveller having learned there was only one place in the town or village which accommodated strangers, and that it was only a few hundred yards away, gave his portmanteau to a porter, and bade the man lead him to the Shropshire Arms.

Now on the local London lines of railway, where there was a chance of meeting a friend or acquaintance, Cheyne always travelled first class, the difference in the fares of the first and third being only a few pence. But when he went farther into the open country, where there was practically no chance of meeting anyone who would know him, and where the difference came to many shillings, he always travelled third class. This was the most important journey of his life. He, a gentleman, was about to call upon another gentleman, and demand satisfaction, and it would not do to travel in any way that did not befit the station of men of their class.

All the way down in the train the deadliness of his design had not been lessened. He would meet this man, he would tell this man who he was, and then he would challenge him. There should be no seconds and no doctor. If the Marquis declined pistols and swords, then Cheyne would try to kill him with his hands, his fists, his thumbs dug into his throat. It was not every man, it was not one in ten thousand, could have lifted that burly ticket-collector over that gate with the neat precision he had shown. He could have thrown that man headforemost twenty feet, and broken his neck against a wall.

Cheyne engaged the best room at The Shropshire Arms, and ordered supper. It was only meet that a man come upon such a mission should be housed and fed as became a man of blood.

It would have been quite impossible for Cheyne to indulge in the luxuries of first-class travelling and first-class hotel accommodation, only he was one who always lived within his means, and had by him, when starting from London, all the money he had got for the right of re-publication in three volumes of his novel "The Duke of Fenwick." The money would not last for ever, but it would keep him going comfortably for a month or six weeks.

Cheyne was not in the least superstitious; but he did look on it as an extraordinary coincidence that the money he had got for the book which had exasperated Lord Southwold, now enabled him to come down from London, and seek satisfaction for the affront which had been put upon his mother and himself.

He asked the waiter who served the supper, if his Grace the Duke of Southwold was at home.

"No, sir, I think not. His Grace the Duke and Lord Southwold--that is, you know, sir, his lordship's only son and heir----"

"Yes, yes, I know."

"Well, sir, the two of them are gone to sea in his Grace's yacht, the Seabird, a couple, ay, or maybe three, days ago."

"And where have they sailed for?"

"Nowhere, sir."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"They never sails for nowhere, sir, great folks like them; and they never go nowhere, just as a man might walk out into the middle of a grass field and come back whistling no tune, nor bringing no daisy nor buttercup, nor as much as cutting a switch for himself in the hedge. I have never been to sea, sir, never. Where's the good of going to sea? But I've seen my share of salt water in my time, and all I ever saw of it was as like as two pea's, ay, liker; for some of the green peas is yellow, and some of the yellow peas is green. But all the sea-water I ever saw was the same in colour and smell and beastliness of taste and disposition, only fit for sharks and alligators and sorts like them. And not a single useful fish would be in the sea but would be poisoned by the beastly sea-water, only for the sweet waters of the rivers running into the sea and cheering up the fishes, poor souls, like a pint of cold bitter after a long walk of a hot day."

"And when do you think the yacht will come back?"

"There's no telling that, not unless you was a prophet. Even the sporting prophets knows nothing about it; for his grace has no dealings with dogs or horses, no more than the miller's wife that's been dead this five year."

"Are they often long away--months?"

"No, sir, not often months. But they are often away a tidy bit. It's like hanging a leg of mutton Christmas-time; it mostly depends on the weather whether the leg will ripen by Christmas-day, or will ripen too soon, or won't be ripe enough."

"And is it the bad or the good weather that brings them home?"

"Well, sir, seeing that this house is built on the Duke's property and called after the Duke, and that the landlord, sir, holds it by lease under the Duke, it wouldn't be becoming in me or anyone else of us to call it bad weather that brings the Duke back to us; but I'm free to say it isn't the kind of weather that everybody would order if he was going on a desolate island and wanted to enjoy himself on the sly away from the old woman. We call it the Duke's wind here; for if he's afloat it brings him home, and that's the only good it ever brings, but the doctors and the coffin-makers and grave-diggers. Most people call it the nor'-east wind. You see his grace is over sixty now, and has got all his joints pretty well blocked up with rheumatism; and the minute the nor'-east sets in it screws him up, and they have to run for home. His lordship stops aboard the Seabird in the shelter of the bay, and his grace goes up to the Castle, and never goes out of his warm rooms at the back of the Castle, farthest away from the nor'-east, until the wind changes."

"And how far is the castle from here?"

"About four mile, or maybe a trifle less. We like to think we're a trifle nearer to it than four miles. Anyway, we're sure of one thing--we're the nearest public-house or inn by a mile."

"There is no railway, I suppose, from here to Silverview?"

"Railway! Railway! Why, it's my belief his grace would rather have a row of public-houses opposite the Castle gate, and the courtyard made into a bowling-green with green wooden boxes all round for refreshments, rather than see the snout of a railway-engine within a mile of his place."

"Then I shall walk over to the place and have a look at to-morrow morning," thought Cheyne, as he strolled out into the porch to smoke a couple of cigars before going to bed.

But he did not smoke even half one of his cigars there. The air had grown suddenly chilly, nay, downright cold. So he left the porch and went into the cosy little bar, where there was a fire for boiling water for those who liked a drop of something hot.

Here were half-a-dozen men smoking and chatting and drinking. As he entered, all were silent.

"Turned quite cold, sir," said the host, who was sitting at a table with the rest.

"Yes, indeed," said Cheyne, taking a chair. "I thought I would smoke in the porch, but it was too cold to sit there."

"Ah," said the landlord, "I think we're in for a stinging nor'-easter--the Duke's weather, as we call it hereabouts, sir."

"Do you think so?" said Cheyne.

"Ay, no doubt of it."

"Then," thought Cheyne, "I shall not have long to wait."