After reading the two papers over carefully, he slowly remarked, with a puzzled look on his face:
"Look here! it's against my rule, but I'm going to let you go this time. Just scoot down that track, now, and remember," he added, as I started through the increasing throng, "if you return I shall run you in."
There was nothing to do but walk, and I started down the tracks, walking—I knew not where.
My scheme had worked and I was free, but far from being in a happy frame of mind.
A small hand-mirror showed me a face that frightened me with its blackness, and my hands were in even a worse condition.
"Oh, if my people could only see me now!" I mused.
A sudden recollection quickened my pace—in the terms of the law I was a vagrant, and what, if the Chadbourn official should change his mind about letting me go. This was a phase of the case I had not considered before, being a vagrant, and darkness had settled down, and I had been silently walking along the pathway of the track for some time, when my melancholy musings were suddenly put to flight. A quarter of a mile ahead a light was shining. "Some farm-house built near the railroad," I speculated; "wonder if they'll give me shelter." Drawing nearer, I discovered my mistake. The light was issuing from the windows of a small store.
A large railroad board in front of the place told me I had reached the town of Grice—containing three or four small dwellings, one store and a town pump; the place is hardly on the map, though it was a boon to me just now.