“I haven’t so much as seen her face,” said Brant, which was near enough the literal truth to stand uncorrected. And a few minutes later he went back into the body of the car to repair the omission. What he saw stirred that part of him which had long lain dormant. She was sitting in lonely state in the otherwise unoccupied car, and his first impression, at half-car-length range, was that she was a sweet incarnation of goodness of the protectable sort. Whereupon he shut the door upon the past and betook himself to her section with a kindly offer of service. “Good morning, Miss Langford,” he began. “I hope you rested well. We are coming to the breakfast station, and there will doubtless be the usual scramble. May I have the pleasure of looking after your wants?” Her smile was of answering good will, and he had time to observe that the honest gray eyes were deep wells of innocent frankness; and when she made answer, there was something in her speech to tell him that she was neither of the outspoken West nor of the self-contained East. “It was kind of you to think of me,” she said. “But I think I needn’t trouble you.” “Don’t call it trouble--it will be a pleasure,” he insisted; and when she had made room for him on the opposite seat he sat down. “We are very late, are we not?” she asked. “So late that we are not likely to get in before night, I’m afraid. A freight wreck and a hot box, the porter says.” “I thought something was the matter. The train has been stopping all through the night, and I could hear them working at the car every time I awoke.” “I heard them, too,” said Brant, though his memory of the stoppages was of the vaguest. “It didn’t impress me at the time, but it does now. I’m hungry.” She laughed at this, and confessed a fellow-feeling. “So am I; and I was just hoping for two things: a good breakfast, and time enough to enjoy it.” “We are pretty sure of the first, because the Van Noy people always set a good table; but as to the time, our being so late will probably cut it short. If you please, we’ll go out to the front platform and so be ready to get in ahead of the rush.” She went with him willingly enough, and a little later they were partakers of the swift down-grade rush of the train in the open air. It was before the day of vestibuled platforms on the mountain lines, and when the lurching and swaying of the car made the footing precarious he slipped his arm through hers for safety’s sake. And she permitted it, does some one gasp? Yea, verily; and, since she was much too clean-hearted to be constantly on the watch for unworthy motives in others, thought no harm of it. Moreover, Brant’s conclusion that she was neither of the East nor the West was well founded in fact, and this had something to do with her frank trust in him. She was Tennessee born and bred, and to a Southern girl all men are gentlemen until they prove themselves otherwise.