double-soled ones were covered with dry mud. His whole luggage consisted of the travelling-bag he carried in his hand, one of those elaborate affairs which generally involve a portmanteau or two to follow, but swelled out of all gentility and stuffed to bursting-point
An Englishman? I asked myself. Well, yes, — at any rate more like an EngUshman than anything else. A gentleman? Well, yes again, on the whole; though not of our conventional type — at any rate a man of some education, and apparently a little less like the common run of us than most one meets.
Here my speculations were cut short by the opening of the ticket-window by the sleepy clerk, and the object of them marched up and took a third-class ticket for Liverpool. I followed his example, my natural aversion to eating money raw in railway-travelling inclining me to such economy, apart from the interest which my problem was exciting in my mind. I am bound to add that nothing could be more comfortable than the carriages provided on the occasion for the third-class passenger of the N. W. R. I followed the sealskin cap and got into the same carriage with its owner. As good luck would have it, no one followed us. He put his bag down in a corner, and stretched himself along his side of the carriage with his head on it. I had time to look him well over again, and to set him down in my own mind as a young English engineer, who had been working on some continental railway so long as to have lost his English identity somewhat, when he started up, rubbed his eyes, took a good straight look at me, and asked if any one coming from abroad could cut us off from the steamer that met this train. I found at once that I was mistaken as to nationality.
I answered that no one could cut us off, as there was no straighter or quicker way of getting to Liverpool than this; but that he was mistaken in thinking that any steamer met the train.
Well, he didn't know about meeting it, but any way there was a steamer which went right away from Liverpool about noon, for he had got his passage by her, which he had bought at the tobacco-store near the station.
He handed his ticket for the boat to me, as if wishing my opinion upon it, which I gave to the effect that it seemed all right, adding that I did not know that tickets of this kind could be bought about the streets as they could be in America.
Well, he had thought it would save him time, perhaps save the packet, as she might have sailed while he was after his ticket in Liverpool, which town he didn't know his way about. But now, couldn't anyone from the Continent cut her off? He had heard there was a route by Chester and Holyhead, which would bring any one who took it aboard of her at Queenstown.
I answered that this was probably so, beginning to doubt in my mind whether my companion might not, for all his straightforward looks and ways, have come by the bag feloniously. Could it be another great jewel-robbery?
I don't know whether he noticed any doubtful look in my eyes, but he added at once that he was on the straight run from Heidelberg. He had come from there to London in twenty-six hours. I made some remark as to the beauty of Heidelberg, and asked if he knew it well.
Why, yes, he said he ought to, for he had been a student at the university there for the last nine months. Why then was he on the straight run home, I ventured to ask. Term wasn't over?
No; term wasn't over; but he had been arrested, and didn't want to go to prison at Strasburg, where one American student was in for about two years already.
But how did he manage to get off, I asked, now thoroughly interested in his story.
Well, he had just run his bail. When he was arrested he had sent for the doctor at whose house he lodged to bail him out. That was what troubled him most. He wouldn't have the Herr Doctor slipped up anyway. He was going to send the money directly he got home, and there were things enough left of his to cover the money.
What was he arrested for?
For calling out a German student.
But I thought the German students were always fighting duels.
So they were, but only with swords, which they were always practising. They were so padded when they fought that they could not be hurt except just in the face, and the sword arm was so bandaged that there was no play at all except from the wrist. You would see the German students, even when out walking miles away from the town, keep playing away with their walking-sticks all the time, so as to train their wrists.
What was his quarrel about?
