ne of the bags--somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you
only knew where that was, or your purse.

You begin a search. You stand up and shake yourself. Then you have
another feel all over. You look round in the course of the proceedings;
and the sight of the crowd of curious faces watching you, and of the man
in uniform waiting with his eye fixed severely upon you, convey to you,
in your then state of confusion, the momentary idea that this is a
police-court scene, and that if the ticket is found upon you, you will
probably get five years.

Upon this you vehemently protest your innocence.

"I tell you I haven't got it!" you exclaim;--"never seen the gentleman's
ticket. You let me go! I--"

Here the surprise of your fellow-passengers recalls you to yourself, and
you proceed on your exploration. You overhaul the bags, turning
everything out on to the floor, muttering curses on the whole railway
system of Germany as you do so. Then you feel in your boots. You make
everybody near you stand up to see if they are sitting upon it, and you
go down on your knees and grovel for it under the seat.

"You didn't throw it out of the window with your sandwiches, did you?"
asks your friend.

"No! Do you think I'm a fool?" you answer, irritably. "What should I
want to do that for?"

On going systematically over yourself for about the twentieth time, you
discover it in your waistcoat pocket, and for the next half-hour you sit
and wonder how you came to miss it on the previous nineteen occasions.

Meanwhile, during this trying scene, the conduct of the guard has
certainly not tended to allay your anxiety and nervousness. All the time
that you have been looking for your ticket, he has been doing silly
tricks on the step outside, imperilling his life by every means that
experience and ingenuity can suggest.

The train is going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, the express speed
in Germany, and a bridge comes in sight crossing over the line. On
seeing this bridge, the guard, holding on by the window, leans his body
as far back as ever it will go. You look at him, and then at the
rapidly-nearing bridge, and calculate that the arch will just take his
head off without injuring any other part of him whatever, and you wonder
whether the head will be jerked into the carriage or will fall outside.

When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls himself up straight, and
the brickwork, as the train dashes through, kills