Phelan picked up his small bundle and started down the track with the easy, regular swing of one who has long since gaged the distance of railroad ties. But his step lacked its usual buoyancy, and he forgot to whistle, Mr. Harrihan was undergoing the novel experience of being worried. Of course he would get to Nashville,--if the train went, _he_ could go,--but the prospect of arriving without decent clothes and with no money to pay for a lodging, did not in the least appeal to him. He thought with regret of his well-laid plans: an early arrival, a Turkish bath, the purchase of a new outfit, instalment at a good hotel, then--presentation at the fraternity headquarters of Mr. Phelan Harrihan, Gentleman for a Night. He could picture it all, the dramatic effect of his entrance, the yell of welcome, the buzz of questions, and the evasive, curiosity-enkindling answers which he meant to give. Then the banquet, with its innumerable courses of well-served food, the speeches and toasts, and the personal ovation that always followed Mr. Harrihan's unique contribution. Oh! he couldn't miss it! Providence would interfere in his behalf, he knew it would, it always did. "Give me my luck, and keep your lucre!" was a saying of Phelan's, quoted by brother hoboes from Maine to the Gulf. All the long afternoon he tramped the ties, with Corporal at his heels. As dusk came on the clouds that had been doing picket duty, joined the regiment on the horizon which slowly wheeled and charged across the sky. Phelan scanned the heavens with an experienced weather eye, then began to look for a possible shelter from the coming shower. On either side, the fields stretched away in undulating lines, with no sign of a habitation in sight. A dejected old scarecrow, and a tumble-down shed in the distance were the only objects that presented themselves. Turning up his coat-collar Phelan made a dash for the shed, but the shower overtook him half-way. It was not one of your gentle little summer showers, that patter on the shingles waking echoes underneath; it was a large and instantaneous breakage in the celestial plumbing that let gallons of water down Phelan's back, filling his pockets, hat brim, and shoes and sending a dashing cascade down Corporal's oblique profile. "Float on your back, Corp, and pull for the shore!" laughed Phelan as he landed with a spring under the dilapidated shed. "Cheer up, old pard; you look as if all your past misdeeds had come before you in your drowning hour." Corporal, shivering and unhappy, crept under cover, and dumbly demanded of Phelan what he intended to do about it. "Light a blaze, sure," said Phelan, "and linger here in the air of the tropics till the midnight freight comes along." Scraping together the old wood and debris in the rear of the shed, and extricating with some difficulty a small tin match-box from his saturated clothes, he knelt before the pile and used all of his persuasive powers to induce it to ignite.