Her husband only listened and smiled, and with one finger made every now and then a soft, slow pass at Alice, who each time shrank as slowly and softly back into his wife's fine arm. Presently, however, Mary raised her eyebrows a little and smiled, to see her sitting quietly in the gentleman's lap; and as she turned away and rested her elbow on the window-sill and her cheek on her hand in a manner that betrayed weariness, and looked out upon the ever-turning landscape, he murmured to his wife, "I haven't a doubt in my mind," and nodded significantly at the preoccupied little shape in his arms. His manner with the child was imperceptibly adroit, and very soon her prattle began to be heard. Mary was just turning to offer a gentle check to this rising volubility, when up jumped the little one to a standing posture on the gentleman's knee, and, all unsolicited and with silent clapping of hands, plumped out her full name:-- "Alice Sevier Witchlin'!" The husband threw a quick glance toward his wife; but she avoided it and called Mary's attention to the sunset as seen through the opposite windows. Mary looked and responded with expressions of admiration, but was visibly disquieted, and the next moment called her child to her. "My little girl mustn't talk so loud and fast in the cars," she said, with tender pleasantness, standing her upon the seat and brushing back the stray golden waves from the baby's temples, and the brown ones, so like them, from her own. She turned a look of amused apology to the gentleman, and added, "She gets almost boisterous sometimes," then gave her regard once more to her offspring, seating the little one beside her as in the beginning, and answering her musical small questions with composing yeas and nays. "I suppose," she said, after a pause and a look out through the window,--"I suppose we ought soon to be reaching M---- station, now, should we not?" "What, in Tennessee? Oh! no," replied the gentleman. "In ordinary times we should; but at this slow rate we cannot nearly do it. We're on a road, you see, that was destroyed by the retreating army and made over by the Union forces. Besides, there are three trains of troops ahead of us, that must stop and unload between here and there, and keep you waiting, there's no telling how long." "Then I'll get there in the night!" exclaimed Mary. "Yes, probably after midnight." "Oh, I shouldn't have _thought_ of coming before to-morrow if I had known that!" In the extremity of her dismay she rose half from her seat and looked around with alarm. "Have you no friends expecting to receive you there?" asked the lady. "Not a soul! And the conductor says there's no lodging-place nearer than three miles"-- "And that's gone now," said the gentleman. "You'll have to get out at the same station with us," said the lady, her manner kindness itself and at the same time absolute. "I think you have claims on us, anyhow, that we'd like to pay."