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“Soon as I could catch a bit o’ breath, ‘Land’s End next stop!’ gasped I. ‘O, but this is the Land’s End! This is what the Land’s End oughter been all the time, an’ never was yet. O, for the Lord’s sake,’ says I, ‘stop beamin’, and pick up your concertina an’ pitch us a tune!’

“Well, he did too. He played us ‘Home, sweet home’ first of all– ‘mid pleasure an’ palaces–an’ the rest o’ the young men sat around en an’ started clappin’ their hands to the tune; an’ then some fool slipped an arm round my waist. I’m only thankful he didn’t kiss me. Didn’t think of it, perhaps; couldn’t ha’ been that he wasn’t capable. It must ha’ been just then your train came along. An’ about twenty minutes later, when we was gettin’ our friends back into their outfits, we heard the search-engine about half a mile below, whistlin’ an’ feelin’ its way up very cautious towards us.

“They was sun-dried an’ jolly as sandhoppers–all their eight of ’em–as we helped ’em on board an’ wished ’em ta-ta! The search-party couldn’ understand at all what had happened–in so short a time, too–to make us so cordial; an’ somehow we didn’ explain–neither we nor the blind men. I reckon the whole business had been so loonatic we felt it kind of holy. But the pore fellas kept wavin’ back to us as they went out o’ sight around the curve, an’ maybe for a mile beyond. I never heard,” Mr. Tucker wound up meditatively, “if they ever reached the Land’s End. I wonder?”

“But, excuse me once more,” said I. “How came the train to stop as it did?”

“To be sure. I said just now that the curiousest things in life were, gen’rally speakin’, the simplest. One o’ the schoolchildren in the fore part of the train–a small nipper of nine–had put his head out o’ the carriage window and got his cap blown away. That’s all. Bein’ a nipper of some resource, he wasted no time, but touched off the communicatin’ button an’ fetched the whole train to a standstill. George Simmons, the guard, told me all about it last week, when I happened across him an’ asked the same question you’ve been askin’. George was huntin’ through the corridors to find out what had gone wrong; that’s how the blind men stepped out without his noticin’. He pretended to be pretty angry wi’ the young tacker. ‘Do ‘ee know,’ says George, ‘it’s a five pound fine if you stop a train without good reason?’ ‘But I had a good reason,’ says the child. ‘My mother gave ‘levenpence for that cap, an’ ’tis a bran’ new one.'”