"I promise you I won't be in the way." The station-master, who had been looking through a little pile of telegrams brought to him by a clerk from his office, now turned towards them.

His expression was a little grave.
"Your special will be backing down directly, sir," he announced, "but I am sorry to say that we hear very bad accounts of the line.

They say that this is only the fag-end of the storm that we are getting here, and that it's been raging for nearly twenty-four hours on the east coast.

I doubt whether the Harwich boat will be able to put off." "We must take our chance about that," Dunster remarked.

"If the mail boat doesn't run, I presume there will be something else we can charter." The station-master looked the curiosity which he did not actually express in words.
"Money will buy most things, nowadays, sir," he observed, "but if it isn't fit for our mail boat, it certainly isn't fit for anything else that can come into Harwich Harbour.