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ich Will's effects were subjected.
Rejoiced at getting through so easily, he turned to hasten out to the cars again, but the door by which he had entered was now closed, and guarded by a gendarme. From the gestures the latter made when he attempted to pass him, Will understood that he was to go out by another exit into an adjoining waiting-room, where he found most of the other passengers assembled in the true flock-of-sheep style; but while he was wondering where he might be driven to next, he saw through the window the train, containing his brother, his ticket, and his power of speech, whirl suddenly away into the darkness, and disappear.
"Hallo here! let me out!" cried Will, rushing up to the officer stationed at the door. "I'm going to Cologne on those cars, don't you understand?"
But the man evidently did not understand, for he shook his head in a most stupid fashion, at the same time feeling for his sword, as though afraid "le jeune Am?ricain" were going to brush past him with the energy characteristic of the nation.
Seeing that it was now too late for him to catch the already vanished train, even if he should succeed in gaining the tracks, Will gave up the attempt, and resigned himself to his fate.
"But why are not the other passengers in as great a state of anxiety as I am?" he thought, as he looked around at his sleepy fellow-travellers, who had disposed themselves about the room in various attitudes of weariness and patience. "Perhaps, though, they're not going to Cologne; very likely they're all bound for some place in Belgium here, on another road. And now what's to become of me, a green American, with no French at my tongue's end but 'oui' and 'parlez-vous,' not a sign of a ticket, and with but six francs in my purse? Oh, Charlie, why did you send me out with this bag?" and Will paced nervously up and down the waiting-room, trying to think of a way out of his predicament. Suddenly a happy idea struck him.
"I'll go out by the door that opens into the town, and walk along till I come to the end of the station building, and then perhaps I can make my way around to the inside, and so see if the train really has gone off for good. Very likely it was only switched off, and will soon back down again."
Putting this plan into execution, Will was soon out in the streets of the queer Belgian city, wandering along in the darkness, striving to find the end of the d?p?t, and then of a high board fence, which latter seemed to be interminable. At length, however, he reached an open space, and was about to leap across a telegraphic arrangement that ran beside the tracks, when one of the inevitable gens-d'armes sprang up from somewhere behind, and gave Will to understand that he was not allowed to put himself in the way of being killed by an engine.
Poor boy, he was now completely bewildered, and wished with all his might that he had studied French instead of Latin. As it was, he screamed out, "Cologne! Cologne!" with an energy born of desperation, and the officer, faintly comprehending his meaning, at last muttered a quick reply in his unknown tongue, and hurried Will off back to the d?p?t with an alacrity that caused our young American to have some fears he might be taking him to quite another sort of station-house. But, notwithstanding their haste, when they entered the waiting-room it was empty, and the flashing of a red lamp on the rear car of a departing train told whither its former occupants had gone.
And now Will understood it all. The passengers had been locked up while some switching was done, simply to prevent them from becoming confused.
"What a blockhead I was!" he thought, quite angry with himself. "If I'd just staid quietly where I was put, and not gone racing off, with the idea that I knew more about their railroads than the Belgians themselves, I'd never have gotten myself into such a scrape. And now what am I to do? I suppose Charlie's still fast asleep in the cars, being carried further and further away from me; and here am I, left at nine o'clock at night in an entirely foreign country, without a ticket, and, for the matter of that, without a tongue in my head. Why didn't some of the other passengers explain matters to me, and-- But, pshaw! what good would it have done if they had? I couldn't have understood a word."
All this time the gendarme had been talking with the ticket agent, and pointing to Will as though the latter had been a stray dog not capable of saying anything in his own behalf. What should he do? where should he go? and how could he manage to pass away the time that might elapse till his brother should miss him and return in search of him? And now the officer came up, and began to question him, speaking very slowly, and in an extremely loud tone. Notwithstanding, poor Will could only understand a word here and there, and at length, in despair, he determined to try a new plan.
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