The emigrant, Bessie and Fletcher, had repaired to the brush shed where Moreau’s horses were stabled and had put the half-dead Spotty under its shelter. Here the exhausted beast had lain down. The trio had then betaken themselves to a bare spot on the shaded slope of the knoll and were eating ship’s biscuits and drinking whisky and water from a tin cup, that circulated from hand to hand. As Moreau approached he could hear his partner volubly expatiating on the barrenness of the stream-beds in the vicinity. The stranger was listening to him with a cogitating eye, his seamed, weather-worn face set in an expression of frowning attention. Her hunger appeased, Bessie had curled up on her side, and with her sunbonnet still on, had fallen into a deep, healthy sleep. Moreau joined them, and listened with mingled surprise and amusement to Fletcher’s glib lies. Then, when his partner’s fluency was exhausted, he questioned the emigrant on his trip. The man’s answers were short and non-committal. He seemed in a morose, savage state at his ill luck, his mind still engrossed by the question of moving on. “If I’d money,” he said, “I’d give you anything you’d ask for them two horses ’er your’n in the shed. But I ain’t a thing to give--not a red.” “Your wife, your other wife,” said Moreau, “doesn’t seem to me fit to go on. She’s dead beat.” The man gave an angry snort. “She’s been like that pretty near the whole way,” he said. “Everything’s been put back because of her.” He relapsed into moody silence and then said suddenly: “We’re goin’ if she’s got to walk.” Moreau went back to the cabin. They had half killed the woman already; now if they insisted on her walking the wretched creature might collapse altogether. Would they leave her on the mountain roads, he wondered? He reached the cabin door, knocked and heard her answering “come in.” She was sitting on an upturned box beside the bunk on which the baby slept. Her sunbonnet was off, and he noticed that she had bright hair, rippled and thick, and of the same reddish-brown color as her eyes. She had washed away the traces of her tears, but her clothes, hardly sufficient covering for her lean, toil-worn body, were dirty and ragged. No beggar he had ever seen in the distant New England town where he had spent his boyhood, had presented a more miserable appearance. She looked timidly at him and rose from the box, pushing it toward him. “I put the baby on the bunk,” she said apologetically, “but I can hold her.” “Oh, don’t disturb her,” he said quickly. “It’s the only place you could have put her.” Then, seeing her standing, he said, “Why don’t you sit down?” She sat charily and evidently ill at ease. “They’ve been eating out there,” he said, “and I thought you might like something, too. There’s some stuff over there in the corner if you’ll wait a moment.”