Hildegarde stood in the way. “Are you going to Nome?” asked the girl. “Yes.” “Do you mind telling me what you are going to do with witch-hazel, up there?” “A person wants witch-hazel everywhere.” “Why do they?” “Best doctor in the world.” “What’s it good for?” Typhoid was in the ignorant mind. “Good for anything. Burns, cuts, bruises, anything.” “Oh!” Down at the foot of the list, after peppermints, went witch-hazel. Again the little woman showed signs of moving on. But she looked back at Hildegarde over her shoulder and, as if to imply: this much I leave you, even if you _are_ too good-looking to inspire confidence. “Witch-hazel ain’t like those noo things they advertise. It’s been tested.” “Oh, has it?” She didn’t know much, this young lady. “Guess it _has_,” said the little woman. “In every country store in my part of the world, you’ll find a keg of witch-hazel!” and with that she would have been gone but that the crowd pressed her back. “What is your part?” asked Hildegarde. The woman looked round at her suspiciously. “Maine.” “You come all the way from Maine to go to Nome?” She nodded. “Guess everybody here but you is goin’ straight to Nome.” Her eye fell on Hildegarde’s pencil, suspended above the list held too high for the little woman to know its exact nature. “Noospaper woman?” she said, putting the most charitable construction on the presence here among the hard-featured horde of a person like this. Hildegarde had been asked that question before. “No,” she said, and saw her credit fall in the rusty one’s eyes. “But I’m going to Nome, too,” the girl hastened to add, wishing to recover ground. But it was plain she had only further damaged herself. “Oh,” said the witch-hazel advocate, moving off with some precipitation through a momentary opening. Hildegarde found the clerk who had seemed to know Mrs. Blumpitty. “Have you heard what boat she’s going by?” “No,” said the clerk, “but she’ll go by the best, I bet.” “Why do you say that?” “Well, she’s one o’ the few that knows the ropes. She was there last year.” And he was called away. She might know Hildegarde’s father!