they were fellow-travellers for the moment on a trip I did not care about making alone, was sufficient. I would just as soon have gone with McCloy or a Tombs policeman.
What constitutes one person out of a hundred "real," the other ninety-nine shadows, is hard to define, but an instinct in me has ever picked out that "real" one. With him or her I know instantly my life is going to be unavoidably linked: through love or hate, through happiness or trouble, perhaps through none of these, but with the conviction that a service has to be rendered or accepted, a debt, as it were, to be paid or received, a link at any rate that cannot be broken or evaded. Such real people are to be counted on the fingers of one hand: R.M. and Paxton were certainly not among them. Nor, for that matter, was my friend Kay, who, I am reasonably positive, missed the train on purpose; while, curiously enough, Boyde, that trivial criminal, was among them. Had Kay, for instance, done what that cheap ruffian did, I should never have taken the trouble to arrest or punish him....
The comic opera touch began with Whitey racing down the platform waving a bottle of rye whisky; it continued next morning when we picked up R.M. at eight o'clock. Our train stopped at Hamilton, Ont., for five minutes. We craned our heads out of the window and saw a party of young fellows with flushed faces and singing voices, and on their shoulders in the early sunshine the inert figure of a huge man without a hat. They recognized me and heaved him into our compartment, where he slept soundly for two hours until we had left Toronto far behind. "Ouch! Ouch!" said Paxton--it was about all "engineer Paxton" ever did say--"Is that R.M.?" They had never met before. We took the money out of his pocket for safety's sake, and it proved to be more than his promised contribution. His friends had indeed given him a send-off, and the all-night poker had proved lucrative.
It was a long, long journey to Duluth, with heartening
