Jim tied a gunny sack on his noble mount, and the two rode on together to the fork in the trail. Jim tried to thank his friend, who knocked his hat over his eyes, and said, "Aw, write it down when you've got more time. Never see a feller in my life I cottoned to more'n you, Jim. First I thought you was too smooth for my kind of traveling, but later, I see it was only the grain of the wood. I believe in my friends, I do. Here we go hopping around this little world for a small time, and then that's done. S'pose you ain't got any real friends for the trip? Rotten, I say. You go ahead and rip Plattsburg up the back. Wisht I could be there with you. Don't you mind consequences. So long, old man! Hike! You beggar!" The buckskin pony was off with a snort and a splashing of gravel as the irons touched his sides, and Bud vanished down the road without a look behind him. The next day Jim was in Plattsburg. One does not know what an alluring quality, what a hazy enchantment can linger around even a small town, until an absence in a real wilderness has given man's work a new flavor. The people coming and going, the traffic of the stores, the dwellings with small cultivated plots around them warmed Jim like a fire. He had been very lonely, without knowing it. In the afternoon he went down to the depot to see the eastern train come in. Here again absence played a part, and restored the locomotive to its proper proportions of a miracle. As the engine glided in, shaking the ground beneath it, it seemed impossible to Jim that man really made it. What! Bend those mighty rods of steel to his will? Twist and shape those others? Cast those great drivers? And after, to drive the monster with a hand? He drew back as the buzzing engine passed him, with something like awe. Then the moving village came to a stop and the passengers sallied forth to test their legs, wearied with long sitting. There was humanity of all shades, from the haughty aristocrat of the Pullman, to the peasant of the immigrant car. Jim had a sense of pleasure in beholding well-dressed folk again; yet it was merely an aesthetic pleasure, for he found, when he began to speculate on the possibilities of the throng before him, that he was more interested in those whose all was staked on the trip, than in those to whom it was only an excursion. People of widely differing nationalities occupied the immigrant car. Jim wondered whether they would ever become Americans, according to his ideas of Americans, a people in which he had great pride and delight; and he shook his head doubtfully as he took them in. Suddenly a small boy darted out of a car; an exceedingly small boy, thin to emaciation, who made his way through the crowd with that sprawling, active, dancing manner peculiar to thin small boys and spiders. Jim half laughed at the little chap until he saw his face; then he realized at a glance that the matter was no laughing one for the boy.