ved again, then stopped. There were calls from one end
of it to the other. Then it started again and continued to move until
Pee-wee thought it was going away, and his hope revived at the thought
that escape might yet be possible. Then the sound came nearer again and
presently the car received a jolt, accompanied by a bang. The convict
was thrown a little, but he resumed his stand, waiting, desperate,
menacing. Those few minutes must have been dreadful ones to him as he
watched the two doors, knife in hand.

Then came more shunting and banging and calling and answering, a short,
shrill whistle and more moving and then at last the slow, continuous
progress of the car, which was evidently now at last a part of that
endless miscellaneous procession, rattling along through the night with
its innumerable companions.

"It's lucky for them," said the convict, through his teeth, as he
relaxed.

Pee-wee hardly knew what he meant, he had scarcely any interest, and it
was difficult to hear on account of the noise. He was too shaken up to
think clearly, but he wondered, as the rattling train moved slowly
along, how long he could go without food, how he would get back from
Buffalo, and whether this dreadful companion of his would take his
stand, like an animal at bay, whenever the train stopped.

After a little time, when he was able to get a better grip on himself
and realize fully his terrible plight, he began to think how, after all,
the scout, with all his resource and fine courage, his tracking and his
trailing and his good turns, is pretty helpless in a real dilemma. Here
was an adventure, and rather too much of a one, and neither he nor any
other scout could extricate him from his predicament. In books they
could have done it with much brave talk, but in real life they could do
nothing. He was tired and frightened and helpless; the shock of the
pressure of those brutal fingers about his neck still distressed him,
and his head ached from it all.

What wonder if in face of this tragical reality, the scouts with all
their much advertised resource and prowess should lose prestige a little
in his thoughts? Yet it might have been worth while for him to pause and
reflect that though the scout arm is neither brutal nor menacing, it
still has an exceedingly long reach and that it can pin you just as
surely as the cruel fingers which had fixed themselves on his own
throat.

But he was too terrified and exhausted to think very cl