I had just settled back, a little unnerved and weak, when from behind me came a touch on my shoulder and, turning around, I saw the strange man and the conductor. The former said, "I have a warrant for your arrest, Madam," and forthwith served it upon me.
There on the cars, all alone, miles away from home and friends, two dollars and ten cents all my little store, I was arrested for—stealing! Stealing my own child! I could not read the warrant as it trembled in my hands—I had never before seen or heard of one. Baby thought it was a compromise for the old gentleman's paper, and it was with difficulty rescued from his little clenched hands, after being torn in the struggle.
As soon as my confused wits grasped the meaning of this I said:
"This baby! This baby, sir? It is mine—mine—it is named after its father—it is mine and I can prove it by everybody in the world, and——"
"Well, well," said the conductor kindly, his voice trembling, "that's all he wants, lady. You will be detained, probably, only till the next train."
"But I must go on," I said, "for my husband is looking for me and I could not bear to stay away another minute longer than the time at which he expects me. Please, everybody, help me."
My fright had attracted attention, and some stared, some were too refined even to look toward me; others merely glanced over their glasses or looked up from their books and went on reading. Some kept their faces carefully turned toward the landscape; a few, just as heartless and more vulgar, gathered around me in open-mouthed curiosity.
One woman's good heart, thank God, redeemed them all. She came forward, her tender blue eyes moist with sympathy, her black crêpe veil thrown back from her lovely face and her waving hair with the silver threads all too soon among the gold, and said in a voice so sweet that it might have come from the hearts of the lilies-of-the-valley that she wore bunched at her swan-white throat:
"Come, I will stop off with you if it must be. Let me see the paper."
Simultaneously with her, the gentleman of the home-spun shawl came from I don't know where and asked, too, to see the paper and both got off the train with me.