of a jail."

"You can't arrest a man for thinking."

"I'll be happy to make it loitering," he said sharply.

"I've a train ticket."

"Use it, then."

"Sure. At train time I'll use it."

"Which train?" he asked me sourly. "You've missed three already."

"I'm waiting for a special train, officer."

"Then please go and wait in the bar, Mr. Cornell."

"Okay. I'm sorry I caused you any trouble, but I've a bit of a personal
problem. It isn't illegal."

"Anything that involves taking a perceptive dig at the U.S. Mail is
illegal," said the policeman. "Personal or not, it's out. So either you
stop digging or else."

I left. There was no sense in arguing with the cop. I'd just end up
short. So I went to the bar and I found out why he'd recommended it. It
was in a faintly-dead area, hazy enough to prevent me from taking a
squint at the baggage section. I had a couple of fast ones, but I
couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing when my letter might take off
without me.

Since I'd also pushed my loitering-luck I gave up. The only thing I
could hope for was that the sealed forwarding address had been made out
at that little town near the Harrisons and hadn't been moved. So I went
and took a train that carried no mail.

It made my life hard. I had to wander around that tank town for hours,
keeping a blanket-watch on the post office for either the income or the
outgo of my precious hunk of mail. I caught some hard eyes from the
local yokels but eventually I discovered that my luck was with me.

A fast train whiffled through the town and they baggage-hooked a mailbag
off the car at about a hundred and fifty per. I found out that the next
stop of that train was Albany. I'd have been out of luck if I'd hoped to
ride with the bag.

Then came another period of haunting that dinky post office (I've
mentioned before that it was in a dead area, so I couldn't watch the
insides, only the exits) until at long last I perceived my favorite bit
of mail emerging in another bag. It was carted to the railroad station
and hung up on another pick-up hook. I bought a ticket back to New York
and sat on a bench near the hook, probing into the bag as hard as my
sense of perception could dig.

I cursed the whole world. The bag was merely labelled "Forwarding Mail"
in letters that could be seen at ninety feet. My own letter, of course,
I could read very well, to every dotted 'i' and crossed 't' and the
stitching in Catherine's little ker