She shook her head. No, she hadn't her ticket; but it didn't matter; she would get one on the train. It occurred to her, while he stepped off nimbly on his long legs, which reminded her of stilts, that if she had not met him in the road, she would have missed the early train north and have taken the later one that went to Richmond. So small an incident, and yet the direction in which she was going, and perhaps her whole future, was changed by it. Well, she knew what was ahead of her, she thought miserably, while she stood there shivering in the wet. She was chilled; she was empty; she was heartbroken; yet, in spite of her wretchedness, hope could not be absent from her courageous heart. The excitement of her journey was already stirring in her veins, and waiting there beside the track, in the rain, she began presently to look, not without confidence, to the future. After all, things might have been worse. She was young; she was strong; she had seventy dollars pinned securely inside the bosom of her dress. Dimly she felt that she was meeting life, at this moment, on its own terms, stripped of illusion, stripped even of idealism, except the idealism she could wring from the solid facts of experience. The blow that had shattered her dreams had let in the cloudless flood of reality. "You can't change the past by thinking," she told herself stubbornly, "but there must be something ahead. There must be something in life besides love." The train whistled by the mill; the smoke billowed upward and outward; and the engine rushed toward her. Her knees were trembling so that she could barely stand; but her eyes were bright with determination, and there was a smile on her lips. Then, just as the wheels slackened and stopped, she saw Nathan running down the gradual descent from the store. Reaching her as she was about to step on the train, he thrust a shoe box into her hand. "You couldn't go so far without a bite of food. I fixed you a little snack." There was a queer look in his eyes. Absurd as it seemed, for a minute he reminded her of her father. "So Mr. Kettledrum told you I was going away?" He nodded. "Take care of yourself. If you want any money, write back for it. You know we're here, don't you?" She smiled up at him with drenched eyes. A moment more and she would have broken down; but before she had time to reply she was pushed into the train; and when she looked out of the window, Nathan was waving cheerfully from the track. "I wonder how I could ever have thought him so ugly?" she asked herself through her tears. The figures at the station wavered, receded, and melted at last into the transparent screen of the distance. Then the track vanished also, the deserted mill, the store, the old freight car, and the dim blue edge of the horizon. All that she could see, when she raised the window and looked out, was the dull glow of the broomsedge, smothered yet alive under the sad autumn rain. _PART SECOND_ PINE