"That train goes to Charlotte, anyway," said the storekeeper. "I think the next one, which is due in about twenty minutes, is the Florence train." A good many men will live half their life in a place and yet never know the exact time a certain train is due, nor where it is bound, and I would have to rely on my own luck, for it was quickly apparent that he was one of the class who are never profoundly sure of anything. Had I gone to Charlotte I would have been taken completely out of my way, at the very outset, causing all kinds of trouble, and this served a good deal to show me the exact size of the job I had undertaken. Most of my fear had now vanished. No real harm had resulted in my first attempt at beating a train, and the tinge of excitement had proven quite fascinating. Of course the local authorities of the hundreds of towns I must pass through had to be considered, and indeed this was now my greatest fear, for, in a good many towns, as the reader is perhaps aware, a man caught beating a train suffers the penalty of from one to twelve months hard labor on the county roads. A second train was coming; and now was the time for me to make good! This time I boarded the train without exciting suspicion. A repetition of my former antics quickly followed, and I was soon lying flat upon the coal, gripping the top of the tender now, though, for my uncomfortable bed of coal had suddenly assumed the motion of a cradle, as the result of the train's sudden increase of speed. Wilmington rapidly receded from view, and with a feeling of joy, savored with suppressed excitement, I closed my eyes for a moment. Where I was going and what I would do when I got there were thoughts that chased through my brain. I tried to picture far off Arizona, with its mountains and barren deserts, and wondered if it would cure or benefit my asthma--I would go direct to Solomonsville, Arizona, where our State Treasurer, Lacy, had been cured. Suddenly I sat up. "What a fool I am," I muttered. "Sitting here in plain view, to be arrested at the first station we stop." In a few moments I had dug out a large hole in the coal and crawled into it, placing the largest lumps around the edge of the opening to help shield me from view. Every thing went well until about dark, when we reached the small town of Chadbourn, N. C., fifty-seven miles from Wilmington. Here the man at the pump house, which is located close to the depot, had seen an uncovered foot, and called the conductor's attention to it. The conductor, who was a good sort of a man, had discovered my presence on the train long before reaching Chadbourn, and so had others of the train's crew. The man in the baggage car was even taking care of my bundles, which he had allowed me to deposit in a corner of the car. Unaware of the fact that I had been discovered, I lay perfectly still, afraid to move hand or foot, and it seemed to me the train would never start.