Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/167

 B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says:

"We shall never be able to leave this city. There are no trains out of Munich at all. It's a plot to keep us here, that's what it is. We shall never be able to get away. We shall never see dear old England again!"

I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it is the custom in Bavaria to leave the destination of the train to the taste and fancy of the passengers. The rail- way authorities provide a train, and start it off at 2.15. It is immaterial to them where it goes to. That is a question for the passengers to decide among themselves. The passengers hire the train and take it away, and there is an end of the matter, so far as the railway people are concerned. If there is any difference of opinion between the passengers, owing to some of them wishing to go to Spain, while others want to get home to Russia, they, no doubt, settle the matter by tossing up.

B., however, refuses to entertain this theory, and says he wishes I would not talk so much when I see how harassed he is. That's all the thanks I get for trying to help him!

He worries along for another five minutes, and then he discovers a train that gets to Heidelberg all right, and appears to be in most respects a model train, the only thing that can be urged against it being that it does not start from anywhere.

It seems to drop into Heidelberg casually, and then to stop there. One expects its sudden advent alarms the people at Heidelberg station. They do not know what to make of it. The porter goes up to the station-master, and says:

"Beg pardon, sir, but there's a strange train in the station."