A breakfast was smuggled into the stable early, where Mr. Belcher lay concealed, of which he ate greedily.  Then he was locked into the room, where he slept all day.  At eight o’clock in the evening, a cab stood in the stable, ready to issue forth on the opening of the doors.  Mr. Belcher took his seat in it, in the darkness, and then the vehicle was rapidly driven to Harlem.  After ten minutes of waiting, the dazzling head-light of a great train, crawling out of the city, showed down the Avenue.  He unlatched the door of his cab, took his satchel in his hand, and, as the last car on the train came up to him, he leaped out, mounted the platform, and vanished in the car, closing the door behind him.  “All right!” was shouted from the rear; the conductor swung his lantern, and the train thundered over the bridge and went roaring off into the night.

The General had escaped.  All night he traveled on, and, some time during the forenoon, his car was shunted from the Trunk line upon the branch that led toward Sevenoaks.  It was nearly sunset when he reached the terminus.  The railroad sympathy had helped and shielded him thus far, but the railroad ended there, and its sympathy and help were cut off short with the last rail.

Mr. Belcher sent for the keeper of a public stable whom he knew, and with whom he had always been in sympathy, through the love of horse-flesh which they entertained in common.  As he had no personal friendship to rely on in his hour of need, he resorted to that which had grown up between men who had done their best to cheat each other by systematic lying in the trading of horses.

“Old Man Coates,” for that was the name by which the stable keeper was known, found his way to the car where Mr. Belcher still remained hidden.  The two men met as old cronies, and Mr. Belcher said:  “Coates, I’m in trouble, and am bound for Canada.  How is Old Calamity?”

Now in all old and well regulated stables there is one horse of exceptional renown for endurance.  “Old Calamity” was a roan, with one wicked white eye, that in his best days had done a hundred miles in ten hours.  A great deal of money had been won and lost on him, first and last, but he had grown old, and had degenerated into a raw-boned, tough beast, that was resorted to in great emergencies, and relied upon for long stretches of travel that involved extraordinary hardship.

“Well, he’s good yet,” replied Old Man Coates.

“You must sell him to me, with a light wagon,” said Mr. Belcher.

“I could make more money by telling a man who is looking for you in the hotel that you are here,” said the old man, with a wicked leer.

“But you won’t do it,” responded the General.  “You can’t turn on a man who has loved the same horse with you, old man; you know you can’t.”

“Well, I can, but in course I won’t;” and the stable-keeper went into a calculation of the value of the horse and harness, with a wagon “that couldn’t be broke down.”