at present absolutely secure; it would take weeks of rain before danger was even threatened, but would it not be well, if possible, to finish so small a job at once, and have it off their minds? Bilton was decidedly of this opinion, and gave orders that steps should be taken to get outside labour without delay. This concluded his morning's work.
He looked at his watch; it was later than he had known, and to walk back a mile to Frampton, where he could get a trap, and then drive over the huge ridge of the tunnel down into Wyfold, might mean missing the train, which would stop for him there, but would assuredly not wait if he was not on the platform. But the engineer had an easy solution. Why not walk through the tunnel, which would take very little longer than going back to Frampton? He would thus find himself within a mile of the Wyfold Station? He could get there in very little over half an hour, going briskly, and would easily be in time to step into the stopped express. No train was due on either line for the next half-hour; in fact, the next train that would pass would be the Southampton to Liverpool express, in which at the moment he would himself be travelling. The engineer would provide him with a lantern, which he could leave at the signal-box at the other end of the tunnel.
This seemed an admirable arrangement, and in a couple of minutes he had set off. The light cast by the lantern was excellent; it shone brightly to guide his path, and gleamed on the rails of the four tracks as they pointed in narrowing perspective up the black cavern that lay before him until they were lost in the darkness. He walked on the right-hand side of the tunnel; immediately on his left, was the main line from Southampton to Liverpool, along which he would soon return at a brisker pace than that which was his now. For some hundreds of yards the gray glimmer from the end of the tunnel where he had entered also cast a diffused light into the darkness, but as he pro-
