The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-01
CHAPTER xxIIl.
1 speed the Partine euest.

~AOUR o'clock in the morning is
 a grace1ess hour. Grayeyards
 may yawn at 12, but even they
 are content to slumber at 4. don't believe there is anything so des- Olate in this world as the mental per spective one obtains at 4 o'clock Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret one experiences on getting up to greet the alleged and vastly over rated g1ories of q budding day. The sunrise is a pail. It is a deadly, douI thing It may be pink and red and golden and full of all the splendors of the east, but it is a resurrection, and you can't make anything else out of 1t. Staying up till 4 and then going to bed gives one an idea of the sunrise that is not supported by the facts. There is but one way to appreciate the real nature of the hateful thing called dawn, and that is to get up with it instead of taking it to bed with you. Still, suppose the sun has to come up, and perhaps it is just as well that it does so at an hour when people are least likely to suspect it of anything so shabby.
 Four o'clock is more than a grace less, sodden hour when it ushers in a day that you know is to be the un- happiest in your life; when you EqOw that you are to say farewell forever to the hopes begot and nurtured in other days; when the one you love snailesz and goes away to smile again, but nol for you. And that is just what I o'clock on the morning of the 14th of September meant to me.
 Britton and I set forth in the auto mobile just at the break of dawn crossing the river a few miles below the castle and running back to point on the right hand bank where we were to await the arrival of the boat con veying the countess and her escort Her luggage, carefully disguised as crated merchandise, had gone tC Trieste by fast express a couple oi days before, sent in my name and con do not now recall, but who in reality served as a sort of nlfddleman in trans ferring the shipment to the custody of a certain yachts commander.
 It was required of me-and of my machine, which is more to the point that the distance of 12o miles through the foothills of the Austrian Alps should be covered and the passengers delivered at a certain railway station fifty miles or more south Of Vienna before 10 o'clock that night. There they were to catch a train for the lit tie seaport on the upper Adriatic, the name of which I was sworn never to reveal, and, as I have not considered ii worth while to be released from that oath, am of necessity compelled to omit the mention of it here.
 MT. Bangs went on to Vienna the night before our departure, taking with him Helene Marie Louise Antoinette, a rather shocking arrangement, you would say, unless you had come to know the British lawyer as well as we knew him. They were to proceed by the early morning train to this obscure seaport. Colingraft. Titus elected to accompany his sister the entire length of the journey, with the faithful Blake and Rosemary.
 Billy Smith was to meet us few HA11es outside the town for which we were bound, with word Of warning if there was anything sinister in the wind
 heard afterward from Poopendyke that the departure of the countess and forlorn dawn of that historic 14th was attended by a demonstration of grie1 on the part of the four Schmicks that was far beyond his powers of descrip Hon, and he possesses a wonderful ability to describe 1achrymose situa