Upon the street, she encountered many people celebrating the event of the coming year, and then she tried a small house that set back in a yard, and which appeared very neat from where she viewed it. She secured a room, and retired at once. Setting the oil lamp on a chair next to the bed, she unfolded the paper and read the article on the front page carefully, over and over again. It was an Effingham paper, and a date of some time before. When she had read it, until she was convinced that she was not dreaming, she sighed restfully as she murmured:
"At last, oh Lord, at last!"
It was the Effingham Age-Herald, and the issue contained the article by Sidney Wyeth, in which he severely arraigned the leading people of his race in that city for their disregard of the general welfare of their people.
"I'm so glad, so glad," she whispered softly. "And to think that it came to my attention in such an extraordinary manner!" She felt her forehead, and winced when the heat and throb came into contact with the touch. She made a wry face, as she recalled the taste of stale whiskey. Only then did she become aware, that when she had turned at the sound of the piano, someone had filled her glass with liquor. And she had drunk it before she realized that it had been doped. She thought of the incident; from the time she had met Miss Jones at the corner, and had been informed of the part of the town she was in. She shuddered and drew the coverlets closely about her, as her mind went over it again. She then tried to recall how she had followed Miss Jones to the place where she had met the men. And there she had drunk for the first time in her life, whiskey, although she was not at the moment aware of it. She rose out of the bed, as the dream came back to her; how the tornado had taken Sidney into the air, and then the story of the hills and the Indians. She pondered for a time, and wondered if such a thing had been the history of the Rosebud Country. And Sidney Wyeth had not been caught in a tornado, but had swept a multitude of people with his pen, in a burning article. She read over a part of it again. The very evils he had berated the most fiercely, were the things she had heard Wilson Jacobs deplore, and speak of more than once. Yes, Sidney Wyeth had written the truth. And from the way it was pictured, she reckoned that it must have created a bit of excitement. And that was the kind of man Sidney Wyeth was. She smiled as she thought of it.
"And I love him. Was it because of these principles, that I strangely felt were inherent in him, that he has been my dream, which has grown larger in my estimation, in the months I have had no word of him?" she asked herself. "I am going to him—I am, tomorrow. Of course," she replied to herself in the next sentence, "I am not going directly to him.... He wouldn't quite appreciate that—oh, he wouldn't appreciate me at all; but I love him, and am going where he is, and after that——" she had no other words, nor thoughts. To be where he was, maybe to see him, became the uppermost desire in her mind.
She did not, strangely enough, think any more about the Y.M.C.A. She thought of her lover as, with a peaceful smile, she fell asleep. She did not dream that night, but lay as she had fallen asleep, and it was six o'clock the following morning, the first of January, when she awakened.
She lay a half hour without any thoughts in her mind, and then, observing a window next to the bed, she raised it slightly, and peeped out. It was not yet so very light. It was, apparently, a quiet street, occupied by working people who were now in many numbers on the way to their work. A boy with a bunch of papers under his arm was passing in their midst, and then suddenly she wrapped on the window pane. He looked up, being accustomed to doing so, and, catching sight of her hand, entered the gate and stood under the window with an upraised paper, while she fished out a nickel and dropped it into his hand.
She smiled with an expression of satisfaction, as she read the article relating to the Y.M.C.A. for colored youth of the city, and was glad to note that Wilson Jacobs came in for a great deal of praise. She laid it aside for a time, and was thoughtful again.
"Yes," she whispered to herself, "I will leave the city at once. The one thing I so much desired, and which has kept me here through these weary months, has been obtained." She closed her lips and planned further.
She decided to go to Effingham. She would send an expressman for her things at Mother Jane's that morning. She would then purchase a ticket and go by the first train. She turned to the editorial column of the paper, and was made happy by a lengthy editorial, relating the effort for the Y.M.C.A., and praising Wilson Jacobs further.