The conductor, red in the face and puffing from his exertion, swaggered through the car, muttering “Puppy, I’ll learn him.”  The passengers, when he had gone, were loud in their indignation, and talked about signing a protest, but they did nothing more than talk.

The next morning the Hooverville Patriot and Clarion had this “item":—­

SLIGHTUALLY overboard.

“We learn that as the down noon express was leaving H——­ yesterday a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car.  Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged.  Thereupon a young sprig, from the East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the conductor with his chin music.  That gentleman delivered the young aspirant for a muss one of his elegant little left-handers, which so astonished him that he began to feel for his shooter.  Whereupon Mr. Slum gently raised the youth, carried him forth, and set him down just outside the car to cool off.  Whether the young blood has yet made his way out of Bascom’s swamp, we have not learned.  Conductor Slum is one of the most gentlemanly and efficient officers on the road; but he ain’t trifled with, not much.  We learn that the company have put a new engine on the seven o’clock train, and newly upholstered the drawing-room car throughout.  It spares no effort for the comfort of the traveling public.”

Philip never had been before in Bascom’s swamp, and there was nothing inviting in it to detain him.  After the train got out of the way he crawled out of the briars and the mud, and got upon the track.  He was somewhat bruised, but he was too angry to mind that.  He plodded along over the ties in a very hot condition of mind and body.  In the scuffle, his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if they should know he hadn’t a ticket.

Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station, where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection.  At first he was full of vengeance on the company.  He would sue it.  He would make it pay roundly.  But then it occurred to him that he did not know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world.  He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself.