le the steward
kept him waiting. My terror must have shown itself in my face, since
Barton spoke up quickly.

"Why, say--what's struck you, Bert?--are you sick?" he demanded; and
then he supplied an answer to his own query: "I ought to be kicked
around the block for loading you up with a big dining-car breakfast
when you had just told me that you were off your feed. Cut it short
and we'll trot up ahead and smoke a cigar. That'll help you get away
with it."

The steward had found Cummings a seat at the forward end of the car,
and how to pass him without detection was a problem that made me dizzy
with the nausea of fear. Barton, with the lordly manner of the
American salesman away from home, made it possible. Snapping his
fingers for a waiter he paid for the breakfasts before we left our
seats, and then quickly led the way forward. At the pause in the
vestibule, while Barton was answering the steward's query as to how we
had been served, I could have reached out and touched Cummings's
shoulder. But the deputy warden was running an investigative finger
down the menu card and he did not see me.

It may say itself that I was in no condition to enjoy the
after-breakfast cigar burned in the smoking-room of Barton's Pullman,
where the wagon salesman's tips, or his good-natured insistence, again
made me welcome. Every moment I expected to see the door curtain flung
aside to admit the burly figure of William Cummings. True, there were
a number of Pullmans in the train, and it was possible that I might not
be in the smoking-room of his car. But it was enough, and more than
enough, to know that we were fellow-travelers on the same train.

There is little use piling on the agony by trying to tell what I
suffered during this forenoon of nerve-racking torture and suspense.
Let it be sufficient to say that the torments ended for me at Decatur,
Illinois, when, at the train stop, I saw Cummings cross the platform to
a street-car followed by a station porter carrying his grip. Barton
marked the change in me at once.

"By George, Bert, what did you see in that platform jumble to make you
look as if you had suddenly taken on a new lease of life?" he inquired
jestingly. Then he passed the ever-ready cigarcase. "Smoke up, and
after a bit we'll go and try it on the dog--see if a second meal in the
diner will come as near to upsetting you as the first one did. Say,
don't you know, I'm bully glad we met up in the smoker this