Two porters helped him along the platform at Broadstone Station and settled him in a corner of the breakfast carriage of the westward going mail. A very sympathetic attendant offered to find out whether there was a doctor in the train. It turned out that there was not. The sympathetic attendant, with the help of a young ticket-collector in a neat uniform offered to do the best he could for his ankle. The cook joined them, leaving a quantity of bacon hissing in his pan. He was a man of some surgical knowledge.

“It’s hot water,” he said, “that’s best for the like of that.”

“It could be,” said the ticket-collector, “that it’s broke on him.”

“Cold water,” said Mannix firmly.

“With a sup of whiskey in it,” said the attendant

“If it’s broke,” said the ticket-collector, “and you go putting whiskey and water on it it’s likely that the young gentleman will be lame for life.”

“Maybe now,” said the cook derisively, “you’d be in favour of soda water with the squeeze of a lemon in it.”

“I would not,” said the ticket-collector, “but a drop of sweet oil the way the joint would be kept supple.”

“Get a jug of cold water,” said Mannix, “and something that will do for a bandage.”

The attendant, with a glance at the cook, compromised the matter. He brought a basin full of lukewarm water and a table napkin. The cook wrapped the soaked napkin round the ankle. The ticket-collector tied it in its place with a piece of string. The attendant coaxed the sock over the bulky bandage. The new brown boot could by no means be persuaded to go on. It was packed by the attendant in the kit bag.

“It’s my opinion,” said the ticket-collector, “that you’d get damages out of the steamboat company if you was to process them.”

Mannix did not want to attack the steamboat company. He felt vindictive, but his anger was all di-rected against the man who had injured him.

“There was a fellow I knew one time,” said the ticket-collector, “that got £200 out of this company, and he wasn’t as bad as you nor near it.”

“I remember that well,” said the attendant “It was his elbow he dislocated, and him getting out at the wrong side of the carriage.”

“He’d have got more,” said the ticket-collector. “He’d have got £500 instead of £200 if so be he’d have gone into the court, but that’s what he couldn’t do, by reason of the fact that he happened to be travelling without a ticket when the accident came on him.”

He gazed thoughtfully out of the window as he spoke.

“It might have been that,” said the attendant, “which was the cause of his getting out at the wrong side of the carriage.”

“He tried it,” said the ticket-collector, still looking straight in front of him, “because he hadn’t a ticket.”

No one spoke for a minute. The story of the fraudulent traveller who secured £200 in damages was an affecting one. At length the cook broke the silence.

“The young gentleman here,” he said, “has his ticket right enough surely.”

“He may have,” said the ticket-collector.

“I have,” said Mannix, fumbling in his pocket “Here it is.”

“I’m obliged to you,” said the ticket-collector. “It was it I wanted to see.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me for it?” said Mannix.

“He wouldn’t do the like,” said the attendant, “and you with maybe a broken leg.”

“I would not,” said the ticket-collector. “It would be a queer thing for me to be bothering you about a ticket, and me just after tying a bit of cord round as nasty a leg as ever I seen.”

“But when you wanted to see the ticket--” said Mannix.

“I drew down the subject of tickets,” said the collector, “the way you’d offer me a look at yours, if so be you had one, but as for asking you for it and you in pain, it’s what I wouldn’t do.”

There are travellers, cantankerous people, who complain that Irish railway officials are not civil. Perhaps English porters and guards may excel them in the plausible lip service which anticipates a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses itself in lofty kinds of courtesy. An Englishman, compelled by a sense of duty to see the ticket of a passenger, would have asked for it with callous bluntness. The Irishman, knowing that his victim was in pain, approached the subject of tickets obliquely, hinting by means of an anecdote of great interest, that people have from time to time been known to defraud railway companies.