"Yes, when they come true."
When he had told her good-night she called after him, "Good luck on the trip."
His spirits were all together different when he entered his room for the second time that night. He set his alarm so that he might not miss the early train. Harold had a habit of reading something every night before retiring. He picked up a volume of "The Rhymes of Ironquill" and read a few short poems, selecting them at random. He turned to Ironquill's version of Aesop's Fables. He read "The Swell," Fable No. 9.
"On the walk a hat did lie,
And a gallus chap sailed by,
And he cut a lively swell—
He was clerk in a hotel."
"So, he gave that hat a kick,
And he came across a brick—
Now upon a crutch he goes,
Minus half a pound of toes."
Moral.
"When you see a person thrown
By misfortune or by vice,
Help him thrice or seven times thrice;
Help him up or let alone.
If you give the man a kick
You may stumble on a brick,
Or a stone.
Fate is liable to frown,
And the best of us go down;
And in just a little while
She is liable to smile.
And the bad luck and the vice
Seem to scatter in a trice,
And to hunt their holes like mice.
And the man you tried to kick
Now has changed into a brick."
"I believe Fate is beginning to smile," he mused, "and here's hoping that the bad luck will scatter in a trice, and it may be that some of these fellows will find some day that the man they tried to kick has turned into a brick." With this pleasing thought on his mind he retired and was soon fast asleep.
Chapter XVI
She was a slip of a girl—not more than sixteen years of age. She had boarded the early morning train at a little station and took a seat on the east side of the coach where she sat looking at the first rays of approaching day, oblivious of the other passengers in the coach.
A man of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty years walked through the coach several times looking attentively at the women passengers. He was well dressed and of medium size. The bill of his cap was pulled well down and shaded his weak eyes. There was a narrow, pinched look about his mouth and chin.
After several trips up and down the aisles he stopped in front of the seat in which this young girl was seated and asked, "Miss, is this seat taken?" The girl turned her face suddenly from the window and hesitatingly replied, "No, it's not taken." The man sat down. He at once proceeded to engage the girl in conversation. At first she was very shy, but gradually her timidity wore off and she talked freely.