“I hardly think I do. Wasn’t it awful to get lost the way we did? I don’t know what I should have done had we had to stay in the mine all night.”
“Perhaps we should have gone crazy, like the miners that man mentioned,” answered Frank. “I guess I’ve had all the coal mine I want.”
CHAPTER XXV
FRANK MEETS FLECKER AGAIN
Two weeks later found Frank up in New York State, in the vicinity of Middletown. Business had been fair with him, but in three towns he had visited he had run across other book agents, and he learned that the territory had been well canvassed six months before.
“I must strike out for some new place,” he told himself, and reached Middletown on a Wednesday afternoon, and put up at a hotel on one of the side streets.
Middletown is a place of about twenty thousand inhabitants, and the young book agent soon took several orders which were very encouraging.
One evening he was at the depot, inquiring about trains to Goshen, when a train from Port Jervis rolled in. A number of passengers alighted and got on, and he watched the scene, which was an animated one.
Many of the windows of the cars were open, and as the train moved away from the station he looked at the people sitting in the seats. In the smoker was a man whom he recognized.
“Gabe Flecker!” he murmured, and looked again to make certain that he was not mistaken. “It is that rascal, I am sure! I ought to stop him!”