"Then it would frighten you,"—in her slow, grave way. "I suppose there are not so many people in all the world beside." (It was Ellen's only experience of a city.) "So I was there alone at the depot, waiting for Joe. I was so sure he would come. There was a crowd of men, with whips, calling out, and plucking at my shawl. I was very afraid, so I crept off into a dark corner and sat down on a box with my carpet-bag and basket. The men drove off with their carriages, but there were half a dozen others under a shed quarrelling. I sat there an hour, thinking surely Joe would be along. Then the clock struck two: I got up and went to the men under the shed. I said to them, 'Do you know Joseph Carrol?'
"The men raised up from where they were lying, and stared at me. I'm afraid, Sir, they had been drinking. So I said it again. They laughed and began to make jokes about me, I cried a little,—I couldn't help it, Sir. I knew the Lord Jesus was near me, but I couldn't help it. One of the men, whose clothes were the raggedest and whose face was very red, said,—
"'Boys, I guess you're mistaken. Who are you, my girl?'
"I told them I was Joseph Carrol's sister, and how it was I had come to find him.
"'You'll have to help me, Sir,' I said to the red-faced man; 'for I have a trouble in my head often, and it seems as if it was a-coming soon.'
"Some of the men laughed again, but the man I had spoken to got up and buttoned his coat. He had to lean against the fence, he was so unsteady.
"'You stop that jeering, Jim Flynn,' he says, swearing. 'Can't you see what the girl is? Where's your money, Ellen?'
"Then it was I found my money was gone. I remembered putting it on the seat beside me before we changed cars at Urbanna. So I told him. He looked at me steady.
"'I believe you,' he says. 'Come along. The Twenty-Fourth Ohio is out in Camp Chase,—four miles out. You come to an hotel to-night and go out to Joe in the morning.'
"So he took me up to a big house, and said to a man there that I was a decent girl, and gave him money to pay for my bed and breakfast, and bid me good-night."