It was close on midnight before he reached the number his fares had given him. It was a parsonage leaning against a church. He rang the bell and finally produced from an upper window a nightshirt topped by a frowsy head. He explained the situation, and his possession of certain properties belonging to parties unknown except by their first names. The clergyman drowsily murmured:
"Oh, yes. I remember. The young man was Lieutenant Henry Mallory, and he said he would stop here with a young lady, and get married on the way to the train. But they never turned up."
"Lieutenant Mallory, eh? Where could I reach him?"
"He said he was leaving to-night for the Philippines."
"The Philippines! Well, I'll be——"
The minister closed the window just in time.
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY BIRDS AND THE WORM
In the enormous barn of the railroad station stood many strings of cars, as if a gigantic young Gulliver stabled his toys there and invisibly amused himself; now whisking this one away, now backing that other in.
Some of the trains were noble equipages, fitted to glide across the whole map with cargoes of Lilliputian millionaires and their Lilliputian ladies. Others were humble and shabby linked-up day-coaches and dingy smoking-cars, packed with workers, like ants.
Cars are mere vehicles, but locomotives have souls. The express engines roll in or stalk out with grandeur and ease. They are like emperors. They seem to look with scorn at the suburban engines snorting and grunting and shaking the arched roof with their plebeian choo-choo as they puff from shop to cottage and back.