The train should have reached my destination in time for breakfast, and we had all looked forward to it and made our arrangements accordingly. The engine, however, which had been put on somewhere during the night, had "given out," and we were not only some hours late, but were no longer able to keep steadily even the snail's pace at which we had been crawling all night. The final stop came on a long upgrade in a stretch of broken country sparsely settled, and though once heavily wooded, now almost denuded. Here the engine, after a last futile, gasping effort, finally gave up, and the engineer descended for the dozenth time to see "what he could do about it." To make matters worse, the water in our car had given out, and though we had been passing streams a little before, there was no water in sight where we stopped. It soon became known that we should have to wait until a brakeman could walk to the nearest telegraph station, miles off, and have another engine despatched to our aid from a town thirty or more miles away. So long as there had been hope of keeping on, however faint, there had been measurable content, and the grumbling which had been heard at intervals all the latter part of the night had been sporadic and subdued; but now, when the last hope was gone, and it was known that we were at last "stuck" for good, there was an outbreak of ill-humor from the men, though the women in the car still kept silent, partly subdued by their dishevelled condition and partly because they were content for once, while listening to the men. Now and then a man who had been forward would come back into the car, and address someone present, or speak to the entire car, and in the silence that fell every one listened until he had delivered himself. But no one had yet given a satisfactory explanation of the delay. At last, a man who sat near me gave an explanation. "The engine lost time because it had too heavy a load. It's a heavy train, anyway, and they put a private car on and the engine could not pull it, that's all that's the matter." He spoke with the finality of a judge, and sat back in his seat, and we all knew that he had hit the mark, and given the true cause. Henceforward he was regarded with respect. He really knew things. I insensibly took note of him. He was a middle-sized, plain-looking man with bright eyes and a firm mouth. Whether by a coincidence or not, just at that moment something appeared to have given way in the car: babies began to cry; children to fret, and the elders to fume and grumble. In a short time every one in the car was abusing the railroad and its management. Their inconsiderateness, their indifference to the comfort of their passengers.