In the scuffle, his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if they should know he hadn't a ticket.
Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station, where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection.
At first he was full of vengeance on the company.

He would sue it.

He would make it pay roundly.

But then it occurred to him that he did not know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world.
He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself.
But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a gentleman exactly.

Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such a fellow as that conductor on the letter's own plane?
And when he came to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much like a fool.