My brother performed his errand faithfully, and I never heard from that source again, except for an extremely unpleasant, though after all amusing, incident.
In the following June I had completed a four-day visit with my people, and was on my way home. I boarded the train at Bellows Falls, and we stopped at Charlestown, not many miles away, when my attention was attracted by an unusually long wait at the station. I was on the point of asking for the reason, when old Sheriff Stebbins, the chap I met in the sleighride party the night young Woods and I escaped from Keene jail, came into the coach almost out of breath, and cried loudly:—
“I want ye, durn it! Ye’re my pris’ner, George White.”
I was thunderstruck for the instant, to be thus exposed to the other passengers, of which there were quite a number.
“All right, sheriff,” I replied, as coolly as I was able, upon recovering myself, “but isn’t there some mistake? It’s pretty rough to accuse a fellow like this, and to interrupt his journey, too. I’ve been home to see the old folks. What have I done?”
“Never mind—come outen this—I’ll sheow ye what ye’ve done,” he cried excitedly. “There’s some folks as will be sheoutin’ when they git hold on ye thar in Keene.”
So I alighted with him, but in passing, I met “Spress” Babbitt, whom I well knew. He averted his face—purposely, I could see; and I wondered at it. He was the express messenger on the train. I realized that Stebbins had been notified by telegraph that I was a passenger on the way to Charlestown, and that some one who knew me pretty well must have been the informer.
“How did you know I was on the train?” I asked Stebbins.
“‘Spress’ Babbitt seen ye on the platform outen th’ car winder at Bellows Falls.’”
“And telegraphed on to you?”