“I have been there for the past month or more. Is it there you live?” “A little ways out o’ the town, on t’other side. I’ve been in that neighborhood nigh on to fifteen year now. Clearfield wasn’t much of a town when father moved out there, but it’s growed powerful fast these few years back.” Floy’s heart gave a sudden bound, and she turned an eager, questioning glance upon the speaker. “I suppose you knew--everybody knew--every one else in the place when it was so small?” “Why yes, of course we did, an’ mother she kep’ a boardin’-house an’ boarded the railroad hands. She was always for helping father along, and that’s the way I do by my Sammy. He’s named for his pap, you know,” nodding toward her boy and smiling proudly on him. “Yes, sirree! and I’m a-goin’ to be as big a man as him some day!” cried the young hopeful, swallowing down one mouthful with great gusto and hastily cramming in another. Floy pressed her hand to her side in the vain effort to still the loud beating of her heart. “Did--did you ever hear any of those men--speak of a sort of shanty inn that stood not very far from the old depot?” “Oh my, yes! and I’ve see it many a time; ’twas there better’n a year, I should say, after we come to the place. And I’ve heard Jack Strong (he was one o’ the switchmen on the road, and boarded with us a long spell after those folks pulled down their shanty and moved off)--I’ve heard him tell a pitiful kind of a story about a poor woman that come there one night clear beat out travellin’ through the storm (for ’twas an awful wild night, Jack said, so he did, a-rainin’ and hailin’, and the wind blowin’ so it blowed down lots o’ big trees in the woods). Well, as I was a-sayin’, the woman she’d been footing it all day, and with a child in her arms too; and Jack he told how some other folks that were there, a man and his wife, coaxed her to give the little girl to them, tellin’ her she’d got to die directly, and she’d better provide for it while she could; and how she give it to ’em and then ran screamin’ after the cars, ‘My child, my child! give me back my child!’ till she dropped down like dead, and would have fell flat in the mud and water in the middle of the road if Jack hadn’t a-caught her in his arms.” Floy’s hands were clasped in her lap, cold beads of perspiration stood on her brow, her breath came pantingly, and her dilated eyes were fixed on the face of the narrator, who, however, was too busy brushing the crumbs off Sammy’s Sunday jacket to observe the look, but went on garrulously: “Jack he carried her into the depot and laid her down on the settee; and while they were tryin’ to bring her to, an old gentleman (I disremember his name now) come in his covered wagon fur to git his son as was expected home from ’way off somewheres, but wasn’t there (he didn’t come till next day, Jack said), and the old gentleman he took the poor thing home with him.