Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/443

 BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

No. DCCCXXXIV.

APRIL 1885.

VOL. CXXXVII.

FORTUNE'S WHEEL. – PART I.
'Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown, With that wild wheel we go not up or down;

For man is man, and master of his fate." – Æneid.

CHAPTER I. – A HIGHLAND HOME-COMING.
travellers are rare in the month of June on the western and wilder section of the Great West of Scotland Railway. The season of tourists is not yet; and sportsmen seldom begin to straggle northwards before the second week of August. Through three-fourths of the year the Company must rely for dividends or debenture interest on its goods traffic – carrying cattle and sheep, herring-barrels, and wire-fencing, with miscellaneous trifles of the kind. As for Auchnadarroch station, which is situated at the head of Strathoran, the station-master, metaphorically as well as physically, is one of the biggest men in the north country. Dressed in a deal of brief authority, he has the satisfaction of patronising the country-folks who travel by the trains; he is toadied in the summer by innocent Cockneys, helplessly eager for direction and advice; and he may simultaneously indulge his indolence and fussiness by managing to make an infinite ado about nothing. Save a lonely shooting-lodge or two, a couple of manses, and the residence of Glenconan, there is nothing in the shape of a gentleman's house within a radius of some score of miles; and although the "MacTavish Arms and Posting Establishment" stands within a short gun-shot of the station, in those opening days of June it has barely taken down its shutters.

So it was all the stranger that, one bright afternoon in June, the station should be the scene of unwonted excitement. The platform, usually left to be cleansed by the rains and winds, was swept and garnished; the porter had taken his hands out of the pockets of his corduroys; the station-master was standing at attention, and in close