The Argosy — page 209: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

192 A Mystery. help a fellow creature, he believed it would be less rough in the low lying lands. Driving along in the teeth of the furious wind, he turned off the highway and got into Dip Lane.-— We saw him in it, the stranger sitting with him.—He drove on after we had passed, pulled | up at the proper place for the man to descend, and pointed out the route. ‘‘ You have got a mile or two of these byways,” he said to him, ‘‘ but keep straight on and they will bring you out into the open road. ‘Turn to your left then, and you will gain Evesham in time— and I wish you well through your walk.” Those were St. George’s exact words—as he repeated to us later. The stranger thanked him heartily, shook hands and went on his way, carrying his black bag. St. George said that before parting with the traveller, he suggested that he should go on with him to Timberdale, seeing the night was so cold and wild, put up at the Plough-and- Harrow, where he could get a comfortable bed, and go on to Evesham n the morning. But the stranger declined, and seemed impatient to et on. ’ He did not tell St. George who he was, or what he was; he did not tell his name, or what his business was in Worcestershire, or whether he was purposing to make a stay at Evesham, or whither he might be going when he left it: unless the question he had put to St. George, as to being able to get on to Cheltenham, might be taken for an indication of his route. In fact, he stated nothing whatever about himself; but, as St. George said, the state of the weather was against talking. It was difficult to hear each other speak ; the blasts howled about their ears perpetually, and the sharp sleet stung their faces. As to his bearing the resemblance to Brook that was being talked of, St. George could only repeat that he did not perceive it; he might have been about Brook’s height and size, but that was:all. The voice was certainly not Brook’s, not in the least like Brook’s, neither was the face, so far as St. George saw of it: no idea of the kind struck him. These were the different statements : and, reading them, you have the matter in a nutshell. Mrs. James Ashton continued to affirm that it was William Brook she saw at the station, and could not be shaken out of her belief. She and William had played together as children, they had flirted together, she was pleased to declare, as youth and maiden, and ad anybody suppose she could mistake an unknown young man for him in broad daylight ? An immense favourite with all the world, Marianne Ashton was fond of holding decisively to her own opinions ; all her words might have begun with capital letters. I also maintained that the young man we saw in St. George’s gig in Dip Lane, and who wore a warm great coat of rather an unusual colour, something of a grey—or a sl a mouse, with the white woollen comforter on his neck and the soft low-crowned hat drawn well on his brows, was William Brook. When he took off his hat ECORNICLICOL KSn(EO) eo, eee ee eS 7 ine —