10 P.M.
However , Mr. Macleay speedily reassured him . He was shown the various processes and stages of the taxidermist 's art , the amorphous mass of skin and hair gradually taking shape and substance until it stood forth in all its glory of flaming eye and proud nostril and branching antlers ; and he was highly pleased to be told that this head he had got in Strathaivron was a fairly good one , as stags now go in the North . So , all his shopping being done , he set off again for the Station Hotel , where he got what he wanted in the shape of dinner , followed by a long and meditative smoke in the billiard-room , with visions appearing among the curls of blue vapor . What the Highland Railway manages to do with the trains which it despatches from Inverness at 10 P.M. and reproduces the next morning at Perth about 7 , it is impossible for the mind of man to imagine ; but it is not of much consequence so long as you are snugly ensconced in a sleeping-berth ; and Lionel passed the night in profound oblivion . With the new day , however , these unavailing and torturing regrets began again ; for now he felt himself more completely than before shut off from the friends he had left ; and Strathaivron and all its associations and pursuits had grown distant like a dream . He was lucky enough , on this southward journey , to get a compartment to himself ; and here was an excellent opportunity for him to have practised his _ vocalises _ ; but it was not of _ vocalises _ , nor of anything connected with the theatre , that he was thinking . He was much franker with himself now .