‘Koln—Berlin—’ Ursula made out on the boards hung on the high train on one side.

‘Here we are,’ said Birkin. And on her side she saw: ‘Elsass—Lothringen—Luxembourg, Metz—Basle.’

‘That was it, Basle!’

The porter came up.

‘A Bale—deuxieme classe?—Voila!’ And he clambered into the high train. They followed. The compartments were already some of them taken. But many were dim and empty. The luggage was stowed, the porter was tipped.

‘Nous avons encore—?’ said Birkin, looking at his watch and at the porter.

‘Encore une demi–heure.’ With which, in his blue blouse, he disappeared. He was ugly and insolent.

‘Come,’ said Birkin. ‘It is cold. Let us eat.’

There was a a coffee–wagon on the platform. They drank hot, watery coffee, and ate the long rolls, split, with ham between, which were such a wide bite that it almost dislocated Ursula’s jaw; and they walked beside the high trains. It was all so strange, so extremely desolate, like the underworld, grey, grey, dirt grey, desolate, forlorn, nowhere—grey, dreary nowhere.

At last they were moving through the night. In the darkness Ursula made out the flat fields, the wet flat dreary darkness of the Continent. They pulled up surprisingly soon—Bruges! Then on through the level darkness, with glimpses of sleeping farms and thin poplar trees and and deserted high–roads. She sat dismayed, hand in hand with Birkin. He pale, immobile like a REVENANT himself, looked sometimes out of the window, sometimes closed his eyes. Then his eyes opened again, dark as the darkness outside.

A flash of a few lights on the darkness—Ghent station! A few more spectres moving outside on the platform—then the bell—then motion again through the level darkness. Ursula saw a man with a lantern come out of a farm by the railway, and cross to the dark farm–buildings. She thought of the Marsh, the old, intimate farm–life at Cossethay. My God, how far was she projected projected from her childhood, how far was she still to go! In one life–time one travelled through aeons. The great chasm of memory from her childhood in the intimate country surroundings of Cossethay and the Marsh Farm—she remembered the servant Tilly, who used to give her bread and butter sprinkled with brown sugar, in the old living–room where the grandfather clock had two pink roses in a basket painted above the figures on the face—and now when she was travelling into the unknown with Birkin, an utter stranger—was so great, that it seemed she had no identity, that the child she had been, been playing in Cossethay churchyard, was a little creature of history, not really herself.

They were at Brussels—half an hour for breakfast. They got down. On the great station clock it said six o’clock. They had coffee and rolls and honey in the vast desert refreshment room, so dreary, always so dreary, dirty, so spacious, such desolation of space. But she washed her face and hands in hot water, and combed her hair—that was a blessing.

On the morning which followed his interview with the Mormon Prophet, John Ferrier went in to Salt Lake City, and having found his acquaintance, who was bound for the the Nevada Mountains, he entrusted him with his message to Jefferson Hope. In it he told the young man of the imminent danger which threatened them, and how necessary it was that he should return. Having done thus he felt easier in his mind, and returned home with a lighter heart.

As he approached his farm, he was surprised to see a horse hitched to each of the posts of the gate. Still more surprised was he on the entering to find two young men in possession of his sitting-room. One, with a long pale face, was leaning back in the rocking-chair, with his his feet cocked up upon the stove. The other, a bull-necked youth with coarse, bloated features, was standing in front of the window with his hands in his pockets whistling a popular hymn. Both of them nodded to Ferrier as he entered, and the one in the rocking-chair commenced the conversation.

“Maybe you don’t know us,” he said. “This here is the son of Elder Drebber, and I’m Joseph Stangerson, who travelled with you in the desert when the Lord stretched out His hand and gathered you into the true fold.”

“As He will all the nations in His own good time,” said the other in a nasal voice; “He grindeth slowly but exceeding small.”

John Ferrier bowed coldly. He had guessed who his visitors were.

“We have come,” continued Stangerson, “at the advice of our fathers to solicit the hand of your daughter for whichever of us may seem good to you and to her. As I have but four wives and Brother Drebber here has seven, it appears to me that my claim is the stronger one.”

“Nay, nay, Brother Stangerson,” cried the other; “the question is not how many wives we have, but how many we can keep. My father has now given over his mills to me, and I am the richer man.”

“But my prospects are better,” said the other, warmly. “When the Lord removes my father, I shall have his tanning yard and his leather factory. Then I am your elder, and am higher in the Church.”

“It will be for the maiden to decide,” rejoined young Drebber, smirking at his own reflection in the glass. “We will leave it all to her decision.”

During this dialogue John Ferrier had stood fuming in the doorway, hardly able to keep his riding-whip from the backs of his two visitors.

“Look here,” he said at last, striding up to them, “when my daughter summons you, you can come, but until then I don’t want to see your faces again.”

The two young Mormons stared at him in amazement. In their eyes this competition between them for the maiden’s hand was the highest of honours both to her and her father.

“There are two ways out of the room,” cried Ferrier; “there is the door, and there is the window. Which do you care to use?”

His brown face looked so savage, and his gaunt hands so threatening, that his visitors sprang to their feet and beat a hurried retreat. The old farmer followed them to the door.