She said back to him, pleasant like, that a young man like him couldn't well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn't going straight back East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she was expecting to pay her way through--and she wasn't any too sure about it, she said, whether she'd get her remittance; or, if she did get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear Captain along come the news the bank East he'd put his money in had broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn't a patch on the trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain. The old gent--he wasn't a fool clean through--asked her what was the matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to transportation, being an officer's widow going home. Hill said he give her a nudge at that, as much as to say the old gent had her. She didn't faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such things had to go all the way to Washington to be settled, she said, and then come West again--Hill said he 'most snickered out at that--and she'd known cases when red-tape had got in the way and transportation hadn't been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible, and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home again to her little boy--who was all there was left her in the world. Her little Willy was being took care of by his grandmother, she said, and he was just his father's own handsome self over again--and she got out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes. [Illustration: "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT A-HOLD OF IT"] Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent got a-hold of it and said he didn't know how to tell her how sorry he was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful, saying she s'posed her little Willy'd have forgot all about her before she'd get back to him--and she cried some more. Hill said she done it so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he went to licking and swearing at his mules. After a while she took a brace--getting down her pocket-handkerchief, and calling in the hand the old gent was a-holding--and said she must be brave, like her dear Captain'd always been, so he'd see when he was a-looking at her from heaven she was doing the square thing. And as to having to wait around before she went East, she said, in one way it didn't make any matter--seeing she'd be well cared for and comfortable at Palomitas staying in the house of the Baptist minister, who'd married her aunt.