ABOUT 7.55 p.m. on the 10th of August, in a recent year of grace, all was turmoil and confusion at Kings Cross Station. Eight oclock, when the night mail starts for Scotland, is always a pretty busy time but, on the evening of that loth, the platform was a surging, seething mass of humanity. Strangers were hustling one another, friends were tearing hither and thither with hardly time to nod and enquire Where are you going, old fellow Barely waiting for the reply, they tore off to the booking-office to get their tickets, then back to the carriages to see about sleeping berths, or scrimmage for a porter to label their luggage, their dogs, or their guns, to some out of the way Highland station, for which the authorities hadn't even provided a proper printed address. The train was immensely long, and two engines were required to drag the heavy freight of humanity and luggage hundreds of miles through the darkness to bonnie Scotland. At the door of one of the compartments was gathered a little group, of three persons. Lorna Stracey-a tall, handsome girl of about twenty years of age, whose fine carriage was even more noticeable than her beauty, had such a distinctly aristocratic air that every one who observed her intuitively felt she was indeed a gentlewoman. The almost defiant pose of her head commanded respect from the porters, who, as they passed, said for the hundredth time, with marked deference, By yr leave. Mother, darling the girl exclaimed, in a few minutes I shall be...