The owner formerly was a terrible mysterious party--never lived here--hardly ever was seen here except in the month of September, as I might say.' The horses were started again, and noise rendered further discourse a matter of too great exertion.

Stephen crept inside under the tilt, and was soon lost in reverie.
Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down brought them to St.Launce's, the market town and railway station nearest to Endelstow, and the place from which Stephen Smith had journeyed over the downs on the, to him, memorable winter evening at the beginning of the same year.

The carrier's van was so timed as to meet a starting up-train, which Stephen entered.

Two or three hours' railway travel through vertical cuttings in metamorphic rock, through oak copses rich and green, stretching over slopes and down delightful valleys, glens, and ravines, sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida, and he plunged amid the hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of Plymouth.
There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the cloak-room, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest church.
Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones and looked in at the chancel window, dreaming of something that was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of the coming month.

He turned away and ascended the Hoe, viewed the magnificent stretch of sea and massive promontories of land, but without particularly discerning one feature of the varied perspective.