Juliet Signal

Railway Incident.

'While recently passing,' says a writer in Household Words 'from Exeter to London, on the Great Western Railway, I found the carriage I had selected for the trip occupied by a very interesting young lady and two rather talkative gentlemen. Of course we became rapidly sociable. - From generalities we came down to personalities, and amused each other with a variety of incidents connected with our own experiences in railway travelling. many of which, you may readily imagine, were singular enough None were more so than the following naively related by the young lady:

'Although I am compelled to travel without a companion, yet I have such a dislike for 'the company' of babies and sick folks, that I never make a journey in the ladies carriage. Only once, however, have I suffered any inconvenience through my unprotected condition, and that exception occurred lately, and on this very line.

After I had taken my seat one morning at Paddington, in an empty carriage, I was joined, just as the train was moving off, by a strange looking young man, with remarkably long flowing hair. He was, of course, a little flurried, but he seemed besides so disturbed, and wild that I was quite alarmed for fear of his not being in his right mind, nor did his subsequent conduct reassure me. Our train was an express and he inquired eagerly at once, which was the first station whereat we were advertised to stop. - I consulted my Bradshaw, and furnished him the required information, It was Reading. The young man looked at his watch.

'Madam,' said he, 'I have but half an hour between me and, it may be, ruin. - Excuse my abruptness. You have, I perceive, a pair of scissors in your work-bag. Oblige me, if you please, by cutting off all my hair.'..

'Impossible,' said I, 'it is impossible.'

'Madame,' he urged, and a look of severe determination crossed his face, I am a desperate man. Beware how you refuse what I ask. Cut my hair off short - immediately: and here is a newspaper to hold the ambrosial curls.'

'I thought he was mad, of course; and believing it would be dangerous to thwart him, I cut off all of his hair to the last lock.

Now, Madame,' said he, unlocking a small portmanteau, 'you will further oblige me by looking out of the window, I am about to change my clothes.'

Of course I looked out of the window, for a considerable time; and when he observed, 'Madame, I need no longer put you to any inconvenience,' I did not recognize the young man in the least.

Instead of the former rather gay costume, he was attired in black, and wore a gray wig and silver spectacles; he looked like a respectable divine of the church of England, of about sixty-four years of age.

To complete that character, he held a volume of sermons in his hand, which might have been his own.

'I do not wish to threaten you, young lady,' he resumed, and I think besides, that I can trust your kind face. Will you promise me not to reveal this metamorphosis until your journey's end?'

'I will,' said I, 'certainly.'..

At Reading, the guard and a person in plain clothes looked into the carriage.

'You have the ticket my love' said the young man blandly, and looking as though he were my father.

'I shall now leave you, madam,' observed my fellow traveller, 'and soon as the coast was clear, 'by your kind and courteous conduct you have saved my life, and perhaps your own.'

In another minute he was gone, and the train was in motion. Not till the next morning did I learn from the Times newspaper that the gentleman on whom I had operated as hair cutter, - had committed a forgery to an enormous amount, in London a few hours before I met him and that he had been tracked into the express train at Paddington; but that although the telegraphs had been put in motion and described him accurately - at Reading where the train was searched, he was nowhere to be found.'