Both were awakened without delay.

“What! is this our station already?” Mr. Lawrence asked, with some surprise. “You must be mistaken, Will—or have I really been asleep?”

“Yes, sir, you have been asleep: and this is our station.”

“Then there’s no time to be lost, I suppose;” and Mr. Lawrence snatched up his valise and started towards the door, followed by his wife and son.

“I almost wish we had stayed at Aunt Eleanor’s,” he muttered, as he helped them off the train. “But I must attend to that business in the morning; and, fortunately, our house is not far from the depot.”

They stepped out on the platform and the train was off on the instant. Mr. Lawrence went into the ticket-office, to speak to the night operator, and, to his consternation, found that instead of being his own village, he was at another, full twenty miles away.

His first act was to rush outside and make a vain attempt to signal the engineer to stop the train. Too late! It had already left the station, and was moving faster and faster.

[30]

[30]

That hope blasted, the unhappy man did not know what course to take, and he strode up and down the platform like a mad man; while his wife and son stood meekly by, the one filled with deep displeasure, the other with agonizing grief and despair.

Presently Mr. Lawrence halted before the boy, with these words: “Oh, Will! How could you have made such a blunder? I fail to trace a striking resemblance between the name of this place and that of our own. You, who know so much about geography, you to be so grossly ignorant respecting your own county! In an hour from this time we should have been at home.—Never mind, Will,” he added in softer tones. “Come, don’t cry; I suppose you, too, were asleep.”

“Yes, I must have been asleep,” Will acknowledged.

The writer does not entertain much respect for Mr. Lawrence, because he was a man who alternately checked and indulged his son. But, on the whole, he was a discreet and affectionate parent—at all events, Will loved and honored him.

“I say,” Mr. Lawrence cried to a man with a lantern, “I say, when will the next train going west be due?”

“Next train for 

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