to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same
minute, and they left exactly on time. As never before in the
history of any Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it
shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent.
She placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted
drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the conductor looked
at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped David over
the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back along
the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going
north. In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.

There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was
hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled
forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of
silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and
bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by
feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed. Whether
it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he
did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat
down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for
the train or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of
him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its
black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with
streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of
human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at
night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to
Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome