"Don't ask me that, Cale; I don't want to lie to you. I shall send my trunk to Spencerville. This is all I will say." "What must I tell George?" For a moment I failed to comprehend that he meant Mr. Ewart. "Tell him what you please." I set some supper on the kitchen table for him and little Pete, against their return. Cale reharnessed and brought the wagon to the side door. We drove those nine miles in silence, except for little Pete who asked several pertinent questions as to the reason of my going. In passing through Richelieu-en-Bas, I looked for the apple-boat. It was still there. Little Pete begged Cale to stop to see it on their way home. "Not to-night, sonny, it 'll be dark," he said sternly; "we 'll try it another day." I thought the small boy was ready to cry at his friend's abrupt refusal. Cale left me at the junction, after he had seen me buy a ticket for Spencerville, and the trunk was checked to that place. He put out his hand. "Marcia, I can't defend myself; all you say is true--but I think you will come to see different, sometime. We 're all human an' liable to make mistakes, big ones, an' I can't see as you 're an exception." The simple dignity of this speech impressed me even in those circumstances. I put my hand in his. "'Sometime', Cale? It has always been 'sometime' with me. It is going to be 'never again' now; no more mistakes on my part." "You _will_ write me a word--sometime, won't you, Marcia?" "I won't promise, Cale. I want to be alone. After all, I am only going away from here as I came--to find work and a livelihood. Goodby." I think he understood. He did not bid me goodby, but went away down the platform, walking slowly, stooping a little, his head drooping, as if all courage had failed him. And my heart was hardened. XXXIII I watched him and little Pete drive away down the highroad; watched them out of sight. Then I sat down on the bench outside the waiting-room to think, "What next?" I had no intention of going to Spencerville. My trunk would be safe there with the address of a neighbor of my aunt. What I most wanted was to be alone and time to think, time to regain strength for the struggle before me. I don't know that for ten minutes I thought at all. I suppose I must have, for I remembered that at this hour Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were to sail; that the Doctor was on his way to San Francisco. That Cale could do nothing by telegraphing them. And what would he telegraph? The ticket-agent and baggage-master locked the office door and came over to me. "I 'm going up the road a piece; the train is twenty minutes late. You won't mind sitting here alone?" "Oh, no. It is a lovely evening." "No frost to-night." He went off on the highroad in the opposite direction from Richelieu-en-Bas. The evening promised to be fine; the sun set clear in the sky. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a night hawk's harsh cry.