“Well, glad to metcher. Ever stoppin’ here again, look me up. Want me to say anythin’ to Nat ’bout you callin’, if he wins out all right?”
“No, no! It was only idle curiosity. He doesn’t know me anyway and never will.”
“Well, good night. And watch the ice in the yard. Mare broke a leg there Thursday. Dam’ nice mare, too. Had to be shot. Got twelve dollars for her hide. Good night.”
Madelaine went out again to Main Street. She strolled about for a time in thought. Her walk brought her in front of the Court House. Nathaniel Forge, the man who had written the little poem that had meant much in her life, was down in a basement cell at that moment—two hundred feet away—ten thousand miles.
She entered the hotel and found she still had no appetite for supper. She asked what time she could catch a train back to the Junction.
“Find yer man?” demanded Pat Whitney.
“Oh, yes,” Madelaine answered cheerily enough. “The person I hoped to find isn’t here any longer.”
VI
Twenty-four hours later she stood in her apartment and took down the copper frame from the wall.
“Married!—A wife and little girl!—In jail! And all the time I might have asked Bernice! Oh, well!”