“Well, if that telegraph fellow isn’t a trump!” thought Myles, as he finished reading this friendly note. “He has sent me the exact sum that I asked the office for in that dispatch, and sent it in such a delicate, generous way that I don’t see how I can very well refuse to take it. He is, indeed, ‘a friend in need,’ and one whom I won’t forget in a hurry. Yes, I will use the money, now that it has actually come to me, for I shall certainly soon be able to pay it back.”
With a lighter heart than he had known since arriving in this town of incident and adventure, and with the bill in his hand, Myles ran down stairs and called for the proprietor, to whom he said:
“I’ll thank you, sir, for my watch, together with a receipted bill for my board to date, and here is the money to pay it. If there was any other hotel in town I would not spend another minute in yours, you may depend upon it. Now make the change quickly, if you please, for I am in a hurry.”
The landlord did not deign to reply to this little speech; but, taking the proffered bill and satisfying himself that it was genuine, he handed out the change, the watch, and a receipt without a word.
Myles ate his breakfast, or, rather, his lunch, for it was now nearly noon, with a hearty appetite, and then started off briskly and happily toward the railway station, prepared to encounter any adventure that the day might bring forth.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE STRIKERS CAPTURE A TRAIN.
AT THE railway station Myles found the train nearly ready to start and its military passengers on board. A foreman of the locomotive works was to act as engineer, and Ben Watkins was to be fireman. Lieutenant Easter found a seat in the locomotive cab, where Myles would have liked to join him but for the presence of Ben, with whom he wished to hold no communication. The two cars of the train were well filled, for the town was so quiet and so absolutely deserted by the strikers that the lieutenant did not think it necessary to leave more than half a dozen of his men in charge of a corporal to guard the jail and the railroad buildings. So he took nearly the whole of his command with him, and an interesting lot they were to Myles, who now, for the first time, saw them all together.