Tales from Bohemia

by Robert Neilson Stephens

When he resumed his narrative he spoke in a lower tone. The recollections that he called up seemed to stir him within, although he was calm enough of exterior.

“I won't describe the experience of my pal on that trip. It was his first tramp. He knew nothing of the art of vagabondage. Of course they had to beg. That was tough, although he got used to it and to many tricks in the trade. They slept in barns and they ate when and where they could. It cut him to the heart to see his wife in such hunger and fatigue. But her spirits kept up better than his—or at least they seemed to. Often he repented of having started upon such a trip. But he kept that to himself.

“When the wife did at last give in to the cold, the hunger, and the weariness, it was to collapse all at once. It happened in the mountain country. In the evening of a cold, dull day they were trudging along on the railroad ties, keeping on the west-bound track so they could face approaching trains and get off the track in time to avoid being run down.

“'We'll stop in the town ahead,' the husband said. 'We can get warm in the station, and you shall have supper if we have to knock at every door in the town.'

“And the wife said:

“'Yes, we'll stop, for I feel, Harry, as if—as if I couldn't—go any fur—Harry, where are you?'

“She fell forward on the track. When the man picked her up she was unconscious. Clasping her in his arms, he set his teeth and fixed his eyes on the lights of the town ahead and hurried forward.

“But before he reached the town, he found it was a dead body he was carrying.

“You see she had kept up until the very last moment, in the hope of reaching the town before dark.

“What the man did, how he felt when he discovered that her heart had ceased to beat, there in the solitude upon the mountains, with the town in sight at the foot of the slope in the gathering night, I can leave to the vivid imaginations of you newspaper men. For four hours he mourned over her body by the side of the track, and those in the train that passed could not see him for the darkness.