In deep shame I hung my head, and it seemed that everyone of those passengers had recognized me. This was mere fancy, of course, for I was then over a hundred miles from home. At any rate, there was one thing certain. I had been left and the train was now belching forth black smoke far up the road.
Those who had witnessed my defeat from the "pop shop" on the other side were now eagerly awaiting me as I recrossed the bridge, and they were ready with sympathy as I told them how I had been put down.
"That train goes to Charlotte, anyway," said the storekeeper. "I think the next one, which is due in about twenty minutes, is the Florence train."
A good many men will live half their life in a place and yet never know the exact time a certain train is due, nor where it is bound, and I would have to rely on my own luck, for it was quickly apparent that he was one of the class who are never profoundly sure of anything.
Had I gone to Charlotte I would have been taken completely out of my way, at the very outset, causing all kinds of trouble, and this served a good deal to show me the exact size of the job I had undertaken.
Most of my fear had now vanished. No real harm had resulted in my first attempt at beating a train, and the tinge of excitement had proven quite fascinating.
Of course the local authorities of the hundreds of towns I must pass through had to be considered, and indeed this was now my greatest fear, for, in a good many towns, as the reader is perhaps aware, a man caught beating a train suffers the penalty of from one to twelve months hard labor on the county roads.
A second train was coming; and now was the time for me to make good!
This time I boarded the train without exciting suspicion. A repetition of my former antics quickly followed, and I was soon lying flat upon the coal, gripping the top of the tender now, though, for my uncomfortable bed of coal had suddenly assumed the motion of a cradle, as the result of the train's sudden increase of speed.
Wilmington rapidly receded from view, and with a feeling of joy, savored with suppressed excitement, I closed my eyes for a moment.