t to marry him, or that she
was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
him.

The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.

And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
manner.

On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.

There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkne