erhaps I can make my
way around to the inside, and so see if the train really has gone off
for good. Very likely it was only switched off, and will soon back down
again."

Putting this plan into execution, Will was soon out in the streets of
the queer Belgian city, wandering along in the darkness, striving to
find the end of the depot, and then of a high board fence, which latter
seemed to be interminable. At length, however, he reached an open space,
and was about to leap across a telegraphic arrangement that ran beside
the tracks, when one of the inevitable gens-d'armes sprang up from
somewhere behind, and gave Will to understand that he was not allowed to
put himself in the way of being killed by an engine.

Poor boy, he was now completely bewildered, and wished with all his
might that he had studied French instead of Latin. As it was, he
screamed out, "Cologne! Cologne!" with an energy born of desperation,
and the officer, faintly comprehending his meaning, at last muttered a
quick reply in his unknown tongue, and hurried Will off back to the
depot with an alacrity that caused our young American to have some fears
he might be taking him to quite another sort of station-house. But,
notwithstanding their haste, when they entered the waiting-room it was
empty, and the flashing of a red lamp on the rear car of a departing
train told whither its former occupants had gone.

And now Will understood it all. The passengers had been locked up while
some switching was done, simply to prevent them from becoming confused.

"What a blockhead I was!" he thought, quite angry with himself. "If I'd
just staid quietly where I was put, and not gone racing off, with the
idea that I knew more about their railroads than the Belgians
themselves, I'd never have gotten myself into such a scrape. And now
what am I to do? I suppose Charlie's still fast asleep in the cars,
being carried further and further away from me; and here am I, left at
nine o'clock at night in an entirely foreign country, without a ticket,
and, for the matter of that, without a tongue in my head. Why didn't
some of the other passengers explain matters to me, and-- But, pshaw!
what good would it have done if they had? I couldn't have understood a
word."

All this time the gendarme had been talking with the ticket agent, and
pointing to Will as though the latter had been a stray dog not capable
of saying anything in his own behalf. What should he do? where should he