I was far from despairing, however; in fact, I never felt more equal to a situation in my life. The whole thing hinged on my getting my first train. After that I felt I could manage. I had studied German passenger cars as closely as possible in watching them pass at a distance, and was certain they offered fairly good “tourist” accommodation on the “bumpers” or brake beams; but I did not feel that I yet knew enough of their under-slung “architecture” to board them when on the move. This meant that I was going to have to start on my “maiden” trip from a station or siding, where I could find a train at rest. A siding would, of course, have been vastly preferable, but as I had none definitely located, and knew that I might easily waste the rest of the night looking for one, the X---- _bahnhof_ was the only alternative. Because this was so plainly the _only_ way, I was nerved to the job far better than if I had had to decide between two or three lines of action. Nor was I in any doubt as to how the thing would have to be done. At the ticket windows, or at the gates to the train shed, I was positive I would be challenged at once--even if no word had yet gone to the police of my escape--and held for investigation. Besides, I had not money enough to take me a quarter the distance I felt that I should have to go to be reasonably safe. The only way was to follow the tracks in through the yards and make the best of any opportunity that offered. The ten or twelve-pound magneto would be a good deal of a nuisance, but, as the possible sale of it at some distant point offered an easy way to the money I was sure to need I decided not to let it go till I had to. I already knew the general lay of the X---- station, and decided that it would be best to go to the tracks by crossing a field just outside of the town. My road crossed the line a half-mile further away, but I felt sure a bridge over a canal which would have to be passed if I took to the ties at this point would be guarded by soldiers. A stumble through a weed-choked ditch, a trudge across a couple of hundred yards of rye stubble, a climb over the wire fencing of the right-of-way, and I was once more crushing stone ballasting under my brogans, as I had done so often before. Ten minutes later I passed unchallenged under the lights of a switching-tower and was inside the X---- yards. Almost at the same moment a bright headlight flashed out down the line ahead, and before I reached the station a long passenger train had pulled in and stopped. “Just in time,” I muttered to myself; “that’s _my_ train, wherever it’s going.”