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“Engine’s broken her coupling-rod, sir–just before we came to the viaduct. Mercy for us she didn’t leave the rails.”

“Mercy indeed, as you say,” Mr. Molesworth assented. “I suppose we shall be hung up here until they send a relief down?”

The guard–Mr. Molesworth knew him as ‘George’ by name, and by habit constantly polite–turned and waved his flag hurriedly, in acknowledgment of the shouting ahead, before answering–

“You may count on half an hour’s delay, sir. Lucky it’s no worse. You’ll excuse me–they’re calling for me down yonder.”

He ran on, and Mr. Molesworth stepped out upon the platform, of which this end was already deserted, all the passengers having alighted and hurried forward to inspect the damaged engine. A few paces beyond the door he met the station-master racing back to despatch a telegram.

“It seems that we’ve had a narrow escape,” said Mr. Molesworth.

The station-master touched his hat and plunged into his office. Mr. Molesworth, instead of joining the crowd around the engine, halted before a small pile of luggage on a bench outside the waiting-room and absent-mindedly scanned the labels.

Among the parcels lay a fishing-rod in a canvas case and a wicker creel, the pair of them labelled and bearing the name of an acquaintance of his– a certain Sir Warwick Moyle, baronet and county magistrate, beside whom he habitually sat at Quarter Sessions.

“I had no idea,” Mr. Molesworth mused, “that Moyle was an angler. It would be a fair joke, anyway, to borrow his rod and fill up the time.– How long before the relief comes down?” he asked, intercepting the station-master as he came rushing out from his office and slammed the door behind him.

“Maybe an hour, sir, before we get you started again. I can’t honestly promise you less than forty minutes.”

“Very well, then: I’m going to borrow Sir Warwick’s rod, there, and fill up the time,” said Mr. Molesworth, pointing at it.

The station-master apparently did not hear; at any rate he passed on without remonstrance. Mr. Molesworth slung the creel over his shoulder, picked up the rod, and stepped out beyond the station gateway upon the road.

II.

The road ran through a cutting, sunless, cooled by many small springs of water trickling down the rock-face, green with draperies of the hart’s-tongue and common polypody ferns; and emerged again into warmth upon a curve of the hillside facing southward down the coombe, and almost close under the second span of the viaduct, where the tall trestles plunged down among the tree-tops like gigantic stilts, and the railway left earth and spun itself across the chasm like a line of gossamer, its criss-crossed timbers so delicately pencilled against the blue that the whole structure seemed to swing there in the morning breeze. Above it, in heights yet more giddy, the larks were chiming; and Mr. Molesworth’s heart went up to those clear heights with a sudden lift.

In all the many times he had crossed the viaduct he had never once guessed–he could not have imagined–how beautiful it looked from below. He stood and gazed, and drew a long breath. Was it the escape from dreadful peril, with its blessed revulsion of feeling, that so quickened all his senses dulled by years of habit? He could not tell. He gave himself up to the strange and innocent excitement.

Why had he never till now–and now only by accident–obeyed the impulse to descend this road and explore? He was rich: he had not even the excuse of children to be provided for: the Bank might surely have waited for one day. He did not want much money. His tastes were simple–Was not the happiness at this moment thrilling him a proof that his tastes were simple as a child’s? Lo, too, his eyes were looking on the world as freshly as a child’s! Why had he so long denied them a holiday? Why do men chain themselves in prisons of their own making?