This had been a particularly interesting arrival of the train, for there had been one passenger. He did not wait long enough for anyone to have a good look at him, but struck right across the drifts toward the river, as if he knew where he was going. There was only one person who claimed to have seen his face, and that was a very old lady who was unable to go to the station on account of rheumatism, but who always kept a small hole thawed in the frosting of her bedroom window, and managed in this way to see a good deal of what was going on outside. When the other members of her household came home, and told of the young man's coming off the train and hurriedly setting out across country without letting anyone see him or ask him where he came from, where he was going, who he was, what did he want, or any simple little thing like that, the aged grandmother triumphantly informed them that he was just a boy with his first crop of whiskers--he carried nothing in his hand--he wasn't even a pedlar or a book-agent--he didn't look around at all--he was sure of the road, but he must have some reason for not wanting to be known. Not many rheumatic old ladies, with only a small eye-hole in a frozen window, would have observed as much, and she was naturally quite elated over the fact that she had seen more than the people who went to the station, and the latter were treated to some scathing remarks about the race not always being to the swift, but the way she expressed it was that it is not "always them that runs the fastest that sees the most." The young man whose coming had aroused this comment walked rapidly over the hard-packed drifts. There had been no teams on the road since the storm, and there was not much danger of meeting anyone, but in any event, he thought his crop of black whiskers would be a sufficient disguise. He did not want any-one to know him. Not that he cared, he told himself, recklessly, but it would be just as well not to see any of them. It seemed ages to the lad since he had left this place, though it was only six months since he had said good-bye to Libby Anne in the purple September twilight.