Frederick was so lost in meditation that he started when someone without saying a word took the ticket from his hatband. It was a cultivated-looking man in a simple uniform, the conductor, who punched the card, said not a word, moved not a muscle of his face, and travelled from seat to seat, performing the same operation and always returning the punched tickets to the men's hats, which they kept on their heads. Nobody paid the least attention to him. Frederick smiled when he thought of Germany, where every train was received with the clanging of a bell and set in motion with three soundings of a gong, amid the general uproar of the officials, who bellowed like a horde of Apaches; and where the conductors demanded the tickets from the passengers with much rough, awkward ceremony. The whirring of the wheels made a pleasant accompaniment to his thoughts. He was enjoying his flight, which signified anything but shame and disgrace. In his complete absorption, he discovered himself picking little threads from his clothes, like a spider's cobweb, and he observed how with each minute he drew his breath more freely. Sometimes it seemed to him that the wheels of the tremendous express train were not turning swiftly enough on their axles, and that he himself ought to put his hands to the wheels to hasten on the new health-giving impressions and place them behind him like thin curtains, so that the partitions dividing him from that dangerous, fatal magnet which he had left behind should grow denser and denser. In New Haven, where the train halted for a short time, a negro with sandwiches and a boy with newspapers passed through the train. Frederick bought one of the papers, and found the whole disaster of the _Roland_ warmed up over again in connection with the sensational reports of the hearing in the City Hall. On that bright winter day his mood was too gay and peaceful to suffer the appalling impressions of the sinking of the vessel and its drowning mass of humanity to revive in his soul. To be sure, he had had absolutely no right to escape, and he was still somewhat ashamed that the regnant powers had preferred him to so many innocent brothers and sisters. On that account, there had been a time when he would have given back his life in a passion of embittered pity and glowing indignation; for there was no sin great enough to justify that horrible, brutal drowning on the seas and no merit great enough to justify escape from it. But on this winter day, on his flight from New York, his rescue filled him with nothing but sincere gratitude. Captain von Kessel and the many others that had gone down with the _Roland_ were dead and so were removed from all pain and suffering. Everything about Frederick this day breathed an atmosphere of convalescence and reconciliation.