oricket fields, for instance, and had never made a run; he had been put on horses and had always fallen off them; he had been taken out shooting and had always shot himself; he had been placed on a platform to represent his family at a national meeting to Consider the Condition of Russia, and had been led out in the middle of the first speech weeping with indignation at being obliged to have his feelings so harrowed. Now, beaming and bounding, he had wedged himself deep into the suburb of Puddispor and defied all efforts to get him out. Still another instance was that of a popular music-hall Star, whose splendid political gifts, natural to her profession, were at that moment the admiration of all earnest statesmen. She, no fewer than three times, after starting in what she believed to be the night train for her constituency, had been discovered in Brighton in hysterics. None of these complaints having been international, however, they had merely been pigeon-holed for "future reference." But the matter was now seen to wear a different aspect. The "future" was turned into the present, with a celerity most unusual in railway circles, and the culprit was indignantly sought. He was discovered almost immediately. It may indeed be said that he did not need to be discovered at all. The complainants all united in a description which could fit but one man on the station; and the VOL, CCVIII.-NO. MCCLXII. porter himself, when confronted with the charges, scarcely seemed able to realise that he was expected to regard them as such. It appeared that his superiors knew very little about him, save that his name was registered as Jonas, and that he had been taken on as an extra hand during the confusion and carelessness of the Great Strike, and kept on afterwards on proving himself an industrious and satisfactory worker. This in itself was very irregular, since to be an industrious and satisfactory worker is fully recognised as constituting no sort of 8 recommendation; and it was not quite understood why the other men had not resented it, or the Trades Unions interfered. But perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that the porter appeared to be immensely popular with his comrades. They said there was nothing he could not do, and nothing he would not. He never talked to any one, and he made no friends; but his great strength was at the service of anybody who called upon it. Moreover, many ourious stories and rumours centred round him. His nickname on the station was "Mr Back-of-the-'Ed," because of his extraordinary quickness of vision; and twice, during shunting operations, this capacity of his for seeing all round him at once had saved a comrade's life. The men informed their superiors that he might be a queer chap, but he was certingly a soollard. He spoke what was known to be French, 3 с and experienced no difficulty the international Mr Julius in understanding even the P. Sieke. It was rumoured most excited travellers of that that he was also a disappointed nation. He also spoke what man, in that he considered had been vouched for by an himself to be one of the few ice-cream vendor as Eyetalian. discoveries of the war that had Where he came from originally not been made. The porter one knew, but he was looked at him, and spoke, and scarred with the marks of the immense flow of Mr J. P. many old wounds, and no Sicke's words suddenly dried demobilised man from any up and became inaudible. theatre of the war could speak of the scene of his own campaign without discovering that the porter was as familiar with it as he was with the platforms of Clapham Junction, In short, it appeared that, while all the lower ranks on the station spoke well of him, even with eagerness, there was nobody who knew anything about him, and everybody would have liked to. He stood, a tall abstracted figure, before the meeting of the L. & S. W.R. authorities to which he was summoned, and listened at first in silence to all that was said about him and to him and against him. But presently, in the midst of the furious indiotment of Mr Julius P. Sicke, there in person to identify and convict him, he lifted his head and looked round the assembly. Managing Directors, Managers, Station-masters, officials, acousers, he passed them all over till his eyes came to rest on the one Director present. The Director sat in his arm-ohair, his elbow on its arm and his chin on his palm, watching the porter with moody and indifferent eyes. He was a great man. He was only there as a concession to the frightful fuss which was being made by "Sir," said the porter, "a Junction is a place where travellers change. To what purpose shall a man change unless he changes?" "Be quiet, Jonas!" hissed a station-master, scandalised at this calm disregard of the international Sicke. "And to what purpose shall a man change," continued the porter, "unless, having done so, he go to his right destination?" "Till you are called on to speak, my good fellow," remarked a Managing Director drily, "you would serve your cause better by remaining silent. These people did not go to their right destinations, thanks to you!" The porter turned his gaze in the direction of the speaker. "Without one single exception," he said, "they did. And not only they, but many others also. They went where they belonged. They went where they could behave as they were born to behave. If that be not the right destination of a man, and the one object of his journey, then is the travelling of mortals verily in vain." This being the first time such language had ever been heard in connection with the passengers carried by the places have long been barred. L. & S.W.R., it is perhaps And if I, weary; I, the doors no wonder that it occasioned of whose dwelling are open a temporary stupefaction, still upon this unhappy earth; mingled with a vague feeling if I turn for a moment to these that some one was being ir- little roads” reverent, though no one quite knew who. There Was gasp, and then several began to speak at once; but the Director, still sitting staring at the porter with his ohin in his hand, made a motion for silence. 8 "How do you account for that gentleman then, Jonas?" he said, indicating Mr Julius P. Sicke. "I suppose you admit you sent him to Brookwood?" "I did," said the porter. "He would be better buried." Amid the ejaculations of astounded indignation which broke out at this remark, the voice of Mr Julius P. Sioke was not heard. His oondition rendered him speechless. "Do you dare admit such a thing before the very faces of the Directors, sir!" oried a furious Managing Director. The porter lifted his head. "Directors!" he repeated, and his contemptuous voice rang down the Board-room. "Where are the Directors? Who directs on this railway the silly journeyings of little men? No man! Not one. Who directs upon the earth the restless thrust of this uprooted generation? No man! Not one! And behold its misery whose children struggle where none of them belong. But in these years the gates are down and the barriers broken, and many may gain entrance now to whom the Junotions of your world with older There were shouts of "The man's mad. Stop his nonsense. Shut him up." But the Director leant forward in his chair and sent his question through the noise. "Come now! Who are you?" he said; and the porter turned his gaze on him and answered "I am the Porter. What else should I be upon these roads of travel! Mine are the gates and the doors, and mine the undertakings of men. open and shut; I forward and check; I send, I begin, I am the Porter." He lifted his head again and stood a moment looking with thoughtful eyes across the crowd, head and shoulders taller than any there. Then, with a curious, balanced, leisurely tread, as though he were panoplied, he went away down the room and out at the door, and was gone before any one could sufficiently recover from the universal petrifaction to stop him. The Director watched him go; and then-whether it was that he thought that he himself was where he didn't belong, or wherever it was that he thought he did belong, nobody ever quite knew-but he leant forward and beckoned to the Station-master. "Follow that man," he said. "Bring him to see me. Oh yes, I know he's mad. But I've a fancy to see him again, Get hold of him somehow.” And the sought for the porter far and wide, and high and low, but he never did get hold of him, either somehow or otherwise, for he was gone. Station-master But whether it is the true one or not, nobody ever saw the porter again. He passes out of these pages as shadowy and unexplained a figure as he passed out of the Boardroom that day, and out of Clapham Junction for good and all. The general conclusion was, of course, that he was a lunatic orank with a per some had But for Mr Pecklebury the thing was done. Though Mrs Bath still dwells in unmitigated stateliness in Puddispor, majestically unmoved by the presence or absence of anybody, and sustaining to the full her permanent refusal to pander, her step-nephew is with her no longer. He had "changed manent obsession who descended from a higher posi. tion in society in order to secure place in which he could give effect to his queer ideas with regard to his fellowcreatures. And that explanation would certainly account very nearly everything. It is, indeed, the only really sensible explanation available. for ever at Clapham Junction. for L'ENVOI. Gods there were in the days of yore, Look where, faster than ever before, The world's fools crowd where they don't belong. THE "GOOD OLD DAYS" IN MOROCCO. BY WALTER B. HARRIS. he puts down to the merciful providence of God. In return he has to pay regular taxation, which he particularly dislikes, and that he puts down to the intervention of the French. He eases his conscience and takes advantage of the situation. Yet gradual as the change is, much has already been accomplished. Only those who knew the country before and who know it now can realise the extent of what has been done. When the French bombarded Casablanca and thus opened the road to their occupation of the greater part I. of Morocco, they entered a closed house, tenanted by suspicion, fanaticism, and distrust. The country considered itself impregnable, and the people looked upon the Christians ” 88 a despised race, condemned by their religion, unwarlike by nature, and ridiculous in appearance. The Moor imagined that with a small Moslem army, aided by divine assistance, he could easily defeat all the "Christian forces of the world. "Your shells and bullets will turn to water," they said, "for the Saints and Holy Men who protect us will never allow the infidel to invade our land. Storms will wreck your ships, and even should your soldiers land, a handful of our horsemen would suffice to drive them back into They really believed it. sea." What a change has come about since then, and it is only thirteen years ago that the bombardment of Casablanca took place! From time to time I accompanied the expedition that invaded the Chaouia and the highlands beyond it, when one by one the tribes gave way and acknowledged that those two French columns, advancing and ever advancing, were stronger than all the Saints in their tombs and than all |