out of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose he
subjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel band
ran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the small
lock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little rounded
excrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was a
small keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in a
minute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid into
themselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might be
tightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blue
veins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted to
the cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, giving
the hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. The
cuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actual
discomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.

But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to be
got off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase.
All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain.
The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of bone
above the hands would catch and hold them.

Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviously
hopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fair
gait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappled
with lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life was
stirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that green
solitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at his
sleeve ends.

Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a
locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite
direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around
and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and
climbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in his
night from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon the
railroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. To
the south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbroken
woodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge against
the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--which
was still burning, evidently.