At the top, I found myself in a vacant lot.  On one side was a low wall that separated it from the street.  There was no time for minute investigation.  They were at my heels.  I headed for the wall and vaulted it.  And right there was where I got the surprise of my life.  One is used to thinking that one side of a wall is just as high as the other side.  But that wall was different.  You see, the vacant lot was much higher than the level of the street.  On my side the wall was low, but on the other side—­well, as I came soaring over the top, all holds free, it seemed to me that I was falling feet-first, plump into an abyss.  There beneath me, on the sidewalk, under the light of a street-lamp was a bull.  I guess it was nine or ten feet down to the sidewalk; but in the shock of surprise in mid-air it seemed twice that distance.

I straightened out in the air and came down.  At first I thought I was going to land on the bull.  My clothes did brush him as my feet struck the sidewalk with explosive impact.  It was a wonder he didn’t drop dead, for he hadn’t heard me coming.  It was the man-from-Mars stunt over again.  The bull did jump.  He shied away from me like a horse from an auto; and then he reached for me.  I didn’t stop to explain.  I left that to my pursuers, who were dropping over the wall rather gingerly.  But I got a chase all right.  I ran up one street and down another, dodged around corners, and at last got away.

After spending some of the coin I’d got from the crap game and killing off an hour of time, I came back to the railroad cut, just outside the lights of the depot, and waited for a train.  My blood had cooled down, and I shivered miserably, what of my wet clothes.  At last a train pulled into the station.  I lay low in the darkness, and successfully boarded her when she pulled out, taking good care this time to make the second blind.  No more water on the fly in mine.  The train ran forty miles to the first stop.  I got off in a lighted depot that was strangely familiar.  I was back in Washington.  In some way, during the excitement of the get-away in Baltimore, running through strange streets, dodging and turning and retracing, I had got turned around.  I had taken the train out the wrong way.  I had lost a night’s sleep, I had been soaked to the skin, I had been chased for my life; and for all my pains I was back where I had started.  Oh, no, life on The Road is not all beer and skittles.  But I didn’t go back to the livery stable.  I had done some pretty successful grabbing, and I didn’t want to reckon up with the coons.  So I caught the next train out, and ate my breakfast in Baltimore.