It was interminable, that hour before they could reach the B. and A. Depot, and the only relief he experienced was in pulling out his watch every five moments to see what time it was.
At last, in the train swept to the depot. St. George looked back quickly, intending to rush back, bestow a thwack on Phipps' back, say he was sorry, and make up. But the throng was great and a woman with a baby asked him to help her off the car, so by the time he got free most of the passengers had filed out and were hurrying along the platform. St. George caught a flying glimpse of the boy he sought, some little distance ahead, and he bounded after him.
"Phipps," he cried, darting in and out between the people, and dodging an expressman with a barrow, "wait, old chap."
St. George was positive that his call was heard, but the boy in front now gathered up his skates to a tighter clasp and broke into a run.
St. George chased him so long as he saw the least chance of gaining on him, then suddenly pulled up.
"All right," he gasped, "if you want it that way, you may have it. I don't care."
A WAIF FROM THE SKIES.
IN throwing out ballast or any small article from a balloon, a certain degree of caution is requisite, as a bottle or any similar object falls with such velocity that were it to strike the roof of a cottage, it would go right through it. We are told that Gray-Lussac, in an ascent in 1804, threw out a common deal chair from a height of twenty-three thousand feet. It fell beside a country girl, who was tending some sheep in a field, and, as the balloon was invisible, she concluded, and so did wiser heads than hers, that the chair must have fallen straight down from heaven.
No one was skeptical enough to deny it, for there was the chair, or rather its remains. The most the incredulous could venture to do was to criticise the coarse workmanship of the miraculous seat, and they were busy carping and fault-finding with the celestial upholstery, when an account of M. Gray-Lussac's voyage was published, and extinguished at once the discussion and the miracle.—Chambers' Journal.