“It was a face, John—a woman’s face upturned to the sky, wan, distressed, wretched, with great sorrowful eyes. It just gleamed out upon me for an instant as we swept by, and was gone. Poor thing! poor thing! she must be in sore trouble.”
He shook his head with a smile of conscious superiority of wisdom.
“Don’t let your imagination run away with you, my dear, or waste your sympathy upon a wandering gypsy, who would not exchange places with you if she could.”
The train was slackening its speed, and they could now converse with ease.
“She is no ordinary tramp,” was the quick, earnest reply. “And if ever bitter, hopeless grief and despair were written on a human face, they were on hers. I wish we could go back and find her.”
“Quite impossible, Dolly; so let us talk of something more agreeable.”
“We change cars soon, don’t we?” she asked.
“Worse than that; we get out at the next station and wait there two mortal hours for another train.”
“Clearfield Station!” shouted the conductor, throwing open the car door.
An acre or two of ground had been cleared of trees, though many of the stumps were still standing; there was no appearance of a town; only a depot and a few shanties scattered here and there, the whole hemmed in by the forest, except on the two sides where the road had cut its way through.