The train started, and rising up from the ground, where I had been hiding, I crawled into the car of ties again. I was run out of the same car three times that night. The last time I was put off; the brakemen told me if I got back on the train again they would shoot me. I had reached the town of Big Sandy, Tex., and decided I had better wait for another train. It lacked but a few minutes of 12 o'clock as I made my way over to a small drug store, not far from the depot. A sharp featured man was talking to the druggist as I entered. He slightly bowed at me, and presently said: "You're a stranger here, are you not?" Something told me he was a detective. I told him yes, I was a stranger and trying to reach Dallas, and a good many other things I told him I don't remember. He finally admitted he had just searched the train I had left, but as he hadn't caught me in the act, he would let me go, comforting me with the assurance that I would get caught anyway at Mineola. "Why, they are so bad after hobos in Mineola they break open the car door seals, searching for them," he said. Two hours later I was standing on the "blind baggage" platform, behind the coal tender of a passenger train bound for Dallas. It was raining pretty hard when we got to Mineola, and no one came to bother me. Shortly after daylight we steamed into Dallas. I jumped from the train as it began to slow up at the State Fair Grounds in the edge of the city. I had at last gotten to Dallas, but I was certainly in a bad fix--penniless, wet to the skin, cold, sick, and deathly sleepy. I went over to a small grocery store, near the fair grounds, run by a Mrs. Sprague. A beautiful young girl about fifteen years old, who was clerking in the store, brought me a pan of water to wash. "Didn't you beat that passenger train in town?" asked the elderly lady, as I began washing. "I did, madam, and I am sorry that circumstances necessitated my doing so," I replied. "I thought I saw you jump off," she said, whispering something to the young girl, who vanished into the back part of the store. It took nearly twenty minutes of hard scrubbing for me to get the cinders and grease out of my hair and eyes. As I finished, the young lady re-entered the store and approached me: "Come and have some breakfast," she said in a low voice, "its all ready and the coffee's hot." For a moment I felt worse than at any time since leaving home. I tried to refuse, but they allowed me no chance. "I've got a dear son myself wandering somewhere over this big world," said the good woman, putting a handkerchief to her eyes. [Illustration: "Come and have some breakfast," she said in a low voice, "it's all ready and the coffee's hot."] There was no help for it, and I humbly assented to take a cup of coffee. The hot, steaming coffee was of the best quality, and four times did my beautiful young waitress see that my cup was filled. Sometimes I think that coffee saved my life.