It was done. I was fairly separated from everything I had ever known before; everything now was new to me; I was ignorant of all around me; each step might be a mistake. I felt this, when a porter, stepping forward and taking my bundle, asked me if I would have a state-room. What was a state-room? I did not know, but saying, "Yes," with a desperate feeling that it might as well be "yes" as "no," I was led back to the ladies' cabin, a key was turned in one of an infinite number of little doors, and I was ushered into what looked to me like a closet, with shelves made to take the place of beds. Here at least I was alone, and here I could be alone till dinner-time; till then there was no call for action on my part. And how precious seemed to me every hour of rest! Singularly enough, my great sorrow did not come back to me in those pauses of action. I seemed then to be entirely absorbed in gathering strength for the next occasion; my grief was put away for the future, when there would come to me the time to indulge it. So I lay quiet during that morning, looking sometimes through my little window at the passing shore, listening sometimes to the loud talking in the cabin, sometimes to the noises on the boat, wondering if all those strange creakings and shakings could be right, but finding a sense of security in my very ignorance. Dinner came, and in the course of it I found courage to ask the captain, at whose right hand I was placed, what time we should reach Cincinnati. "Not till after breakfast," was his welcome answer; for I had been haunted by a dread of being set adrift in a great city in the middle of the night, when I might perhaps fall into some den of thieves. I had read of such things in my books. This gave me still the afternoon before it would be necessary to think, some hours more in which to rest mind and body. The night came at last, and I must decide what step to take next, that, my mind made up, I might perhaps get some sleep. I turned restlessly in my narrow bed, got up, and stood at the window, tried first the upper shelf, and then the lower, but no possible plan presented itself. I still saw before me that terrible city where I should be ten times lonelier than in the midst of our forests, where I should make mistakes at every turn, where I should not know one face out of the many thousands that crowded upon my nervous fancy. I seemed to be afraid of nothing but human beings, and, at the thought of encountering them, my woman's heart gave way. In vain I reasoned with myself, "I shall not see all Cincinnati at once,--not more at one time, perhaps, than I saw to-day at dinner." Still came up those endless streets, all filled with strange faces; still I saw myself pushed, jostled, by a succession of men and women who cared nothing for me. Suddenly came the thought, "Tom Salyers is in Cincinnati. There is one person there that I know. If I could only find him, he would take care of me till I knew how to take care of myself."