A railroad detective was there, but he seemed to pay no attention to me, being more interested in pickpockets than in bank looters, I guessed after slyly looking him over. I climbed in the second coach the moment the train came in, but as I did so I observed that he went in the first. It occurred to me that he would pass through the whole train, scrutinizing the passengers. My imagination made it easy for me to believe that he was, after all, looking for any one answering the description of the Cadiz burglars. I began looking for some sort of an aid in the way of diverting his attention from me, should he pass through my car. I had provided myself with a ticket to Altoona, not deeming it wise to get a through ticket to New York, and it occurred to me that it might be wisdom on my part to postpone my journey until another train. But fate played a trump card for me in saving the only vacant sitting in the car, and that was beside a very pretty young woman who was holding on her lap about the cutest two-year-old cherub my eyes ever dwelt on. The mother, for so she proved to be, was well dressed, and had an exceedingly refined face. I considered it fortunate that I could sit beside her in the predicament I believed myself in. She graciously permitted me to occupy the seat, whereupon I immediately put on my best deportment, and much to my satisfaction we were in a quiet conversation when the detective walked through the car, paying not the slightest attention to me. Perhaps my precaution was not at all necessary, but I will not believe until this day that it was not a wise action on my part. I have travelled many thousands of miles on railroads, since that long-ago day, and, as I think of it now, that was one of a very few occasions when I sought out a woman for a companion on a train. I soon learned that she was going to Harrisburg, that her husband was a dry-goods merchant there, and that she’d been away visiting and was anxious to get back, which accounted for her travelling at that unseemly hour.