At the first stop I got down, intending to go in a coach and steal a hat check, or crawl under a seat out of sight. Looking about I saw that the last coach was in darkness, and thinking it was a dead, empty car, I waited till it came along and boarded the front end, hoping to find the door unlocked. The door opened to my touch, but when I went inside I found myself in a luxuriously furnished private car instead of a dead coach.

There are only three degrees of tough luck⁠—bad, worse, and worst. When you reach the worst you have the satisfaction of knowing that if your luck changes it has to change for the better. I considered my Waterloo at the Chinese store the direst degree of bad luck. Not only had I lost a big bunch of money; I was hurt somewhere else.