another day in the place would be the death of him.

So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night
was far advanced. Whether he was recaptured by the town-council,
or is bolting at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know
not. They hope he may be still bolting; if so, their best wishes
are with him.

It entered Mr. Idle's head, on the borders of Cumberland, that
there could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a
few minutes each, than a railway station. 'An intermediate station
on a line--a junction--anything of that sort,' Thomas suggested.
Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed
on and on, until they came to such a station where there was an
Inn.

'Here,' said Thomas, 'we may be luxuriously lazy; other people will
travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their folly.'

It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph
bell was in a very restless condition. All manner of cross-lines
of rails came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers;
and, a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box
was constantly going through the motions of drawing immense
quantities of beer at a public-house bar. In one direction,
confused perspectives of embankments and arches were to be seen
from the platform; in the other, the rails soon disentangled
themselves into two tracks and shot away under a bridge, and curved
round a corner. Sidings were there, in which empty luggage-vans