Among the passengers who alighted from the train at the terminus of Shepperton, the little village near the Thames, one evening in early summer, was a young man differing noticeably, but in a way not easy to define, from all the rest. He was tall, but so were many; dark, but most men are dark; bronzed, but the young men who spent idle hours in sculling or punting on the river were as suntanned as he. Nor was it anything in his attire that marked him out from his fellow-men, unless, perhaps, that he was a trifle “smarter” than they. Yet many eyes had been attracted to him as he walked down the platform at Waterloo, and many followed him, at Shepperton station, as he stepped out of the compartment and doffed his soft hat to a young girl, who stood evidently awaiting him, and whose face lit up at his approach.

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