The porter, feeling that he had been treated with injustice, stood gazing reproachfully after the man for a full minute before he followed him to tell him that the wash-room was at the other end of the car and not down past the drawing-room as he evidently supposed. He found his man standing in stocking feet on the cold iron platform, his head out of the opening left in the vestibuled train, for when the porter came in he had drawn shut the outer door and slammed down the movable platform, making it impossible for anyone to get out. There was only the little opening the size of a window above the grating guard, and the man clung to it as if he would jump over it if he only dared. He was looking back over the track and his face was not good to see. He turned wildly upon the porter. “I want you to stop this train and let me off,” he shouted. “I’ve lost something valuable back there on the track. Stop the train quick, I tell you, or I’ll sue the railroad.” “What was it you lost?” asked the porter respectfully. He wasn’t sure but the man was half asleep yet. “It was a--my--why it was a very valuable paper. It means a fortune to me and several other people and I must go back and get it. Stop the train, I tell you, at once or I’ll jump out.” “I can’t stop de train sah, you’ll hev to see de conductah sah, ’bout dat. But I specks there’s mighty little prospec’ o’ gettin’ dis train stopped foh it gits to its destinashun sah. We’s one hour a’hind time now, sah, an’ he’s gotta make up foh we gits to Buff’lo.” The excited passenger railed and stormed until several sleepers were awakened and stuck curious sleepy countenances out from the curtains of their berths, but the porter was obdurate, and would not take any measures to stop the train, nor even call the conductor until the passenger promised to return quietly to his berth. The thick-set man was not used to obeying but he saw that he was only hindering himself and finally hurried back to his berth where he hastily parted the curtains, craning his neck to see back along the track and over the green valley growing smaller and smaller now in the distance. He could just make out two moving specks on the white winding ribbon of the road. He felt sure he knew the direction they were taking. If he only could get off that train he could easily catch them, for they would have no idea he was coming, and would take no precautions. If he had only wakened a few seconds sooner he would have been following them even now. Fully ten minutes he argued with the conductor, showing a wide incongruity between his language and his gentlemanly attire, but the conductor would do nothing but promise to set him down at a water tower ten miles ahead where they had to slow up for water. He said sue or no sue he had his orders, and the thick-set man did not inspire him either to sympathy or confidence. The conductor had been many years on the road and generally knew when to stop his train and when to let it go on.