CHAPTER XVI.
THE EVANGELIST INVESTS IN A HORSE.
A rather unprofitable journey by daylight was attempted, with but little success. The trains were so closely watched that they found it next to impossible to ride on them. Some tramps, whom they met on foot, informed them that this was on account of a fracas that had occurred on the western end of the line. The train men were expelling some free-riders, and handling one of them very roughly the tramp drew a knife and plunged it into the side of a brakeman. The wounded man was not expected to recover, and very strict orders had been issued by the management of the road to prevent all tramps from boarding trains or riding upon them.
This being the case the Evangelist suggested that they strike across the country, and get on another railroad, running nearly parallel, fifty miles to the south of them.
They walked quite a distance that evening, and camped in a straw pile. On the following day they resumed their line of march through a lovely rolling country of openings, woodlands and meadows, interspersed by many streams.
It was the middle of September—the golden time of all the year. The atmosphere was filled with a soft, hazy lustre; the reflex heat of the summer months after it had journeyed so far as the ice fields of the far north, and been turned back in a soft and gracious air. Gentle winds told forest tales among the tall trees, and nodded the heads of the grey mullens in requiem over the great, broad, plush-like leaves that lay dying at the foot of the stalks. Sentinel sheaves of wheat stood grouped about the yellow fields, and from out the stubble came the piping of the quail mingling with the rustling of the long, drooping, corn leaves; a mellow, autumnal refrain. Near at hand the chattering brook ran a messenger of harvest-time to the far off river, and the river carried the news to the gulf, and the gulf swept it to the four corners of the earth.
"As printed staves of thankful Nature's hymn,
The fence of rails a soothing grace devotes,
With clinging vines for bass and treble cleffs,
And wrens and robins here and there for notes;