Unless he could go with a crowd, Jack did not care much about fishing.  He liked the fun the gang could have together in the wilds, but that was all; like last summer when Hen had run into the hornet’s nest hanging on a bush and thought it was an oriole’s basket!  Alone and weighed down with horror as he was, Jack could not stir up any enthusiasm for the sport.  But he found out that it would not cost much to reach the little town called Quincy, of which he had never before heard.

No one, surely, would ever think of looking there for him.  He could take the evening train out of San Francisco, and in the morning he would be there.  And if he were not sufficiently lost in Quincy, he could take to the mountains all around.  There were mountains, he guessed from what the boy had told him; and canyons and heavy timber.  The thought of having some definite, attainable goal cheered him so much that he went to sleep again, sitting hunched down in the seat with his hat over his eyes, so that no one could see his face; and since no one but the man who sold it had ever seen him in that sport suit, he felt almost safe.

He left the train reluctantly at the big, new station in San Francisco, and took a street car to the ferry depot.  There he kept out of sight behind a newspaper in the entrance to the waiting room until he was permitted to pass through the iron gate to the big, resounding room where passengers for the train ferry were herded together like corralled sheep.  It seemed very quiet there, to be the terminal station in a large city.

Jack judged nervously that people did not flock to the best fishing in the State, in spite of all the peanut butcher had told him.  He was glad of that, so long as he was not so alone as to be conspicuous.  Aside from the thin sprinkling of passengers, everything was just as the boy had told him.  He was ferried in a big, empty boat across the darkling bay to the train that stood backed down on the mole waiting for him and the half dozen other passengers.  He chose the rear seat in another chair car very much like the one he had left, gave up his ticket and was tagged, pulled his hat down over his nose and slept again, stirring now and then because of his cramped legs.

When he awoke finally it was daylight, and the train was puffing into a tunnel.  He could see the engine dive into the black hole, dragging the coaches after it like the tail of a snake.  When they emerged, Jack looked down upon a green-and-white-scurrying river; away down—­so far that it startled him a little.  And he looked up steep pine-clad slopes to the rugged peaks of the mountains.  He heaved a sigh of relief.  Surely no one could possibly find him in a place like this.

After a while he was told to change for Quincy, and descended into a fresh, green-and-blue world edged with white clouds.  There was no town—­nothing but green hills and a deep-set, unbelievable valley floor marked off with fences, and a little yellow station with a red roof, and a toy engine panting importantly in front of its one tiny baggage-and-passenger coach, with a freight car for ballast.