The train stepped at Tring, and, as it was going on again, a man ran toward the third-class carriage Little was seated in.  One of the servants of the company tried to stop him, very properly.  He struggled with that official, and eventually shook him off.  Meantime the train was accelerating its pace.  In spite of that, this personage made a run and a bound, and, half leaping, half scrambling, got his head and shoulders over the door, and there oscillated, till Little grabbed him with both hands, and drew him powerfully in, and admonished him.  “That is a foolhardy trick, sir, begging your pardon.”

“Young man,” panted the invader, “do you know who you’re a-speaking to?”

“No.  The Emperor of China?”

“No such trash; it’s Ben Bolt, a man that’s bad to beat.”

“Well, you’ll get beat some day, if you go jumping in and out of trains in motion.”

“A many have been killed that way,” suggested a huge woman in the corner with the meekest and most timid voice imaginable.

Mr. Bolt eyed the speaker with a humorous voice.  “Well, if I’m ever killed that way, I’ll send you a letter by the post.  Got a sweetheart, ma’am?”

“I’ve got a good husband, sir,” said she, with mild dignity, and pointed to a thin, sour personage opposite, with his nose in a newspaper.  Deep in some public question, he ignored this little private inquiry.

“That’s unlucky,” said Bolt, “for here am I, just landed from Victoria, and money in both pockets.  And where do you think I am going now? to Chester, to see my father and mother, and show them I was right after all.  They wanted me to go to school; I wouldn’t.  Leathered me; I howled, but wouldn’t spell; I was always bad to beat.  Next thing was, they wanted to make a tanner of me.  I wouldn’t.  ’Give me fifty pounds and let me try the world,’ says I. They wouldn’t.  We quarreled.  My uncle interfered one day, and gave me fifty pounds.  ‘Go to the devil,’ said he, ‘if you like; so as you don’t come back.’  I went to Sydney, and doubled my fifty; got a sheep-run, and turned my hundred into a thousand.  Then they found gold, and that brought up a dozen ways of making money, all of ’em better than digging.  Why, ma’am, I made ten thousand pounds by selling the beastliest lemonade you ever tasted for gold-dust at the mines.  That was a good swop, wasn’t it?  So now I’m come home to see if I can stand the Old Country and its ways; and I’m going to see the old folk.  I haven’t heard a word about them this twenty years.”

“Oh, dear, sir,” said the meek woman, “twenty years is a long time.  I hope you won’t find them dead an’ buried.”

“Don’t say that; don’t say that!” And the tough, rough man showed a grain of feeling.  He soon recovered himself, though, and said more obstreperously than ever, “If they are, I disown ’em.  None of your faint-hearted people for me.  I despise a chap that gives in before eighty.  I’m Ben Bolt, that is bad to beat.  Death himself isn’t going to bowl me out till I’ve had my innings.”