ot come back, Miss West made the move I had
dreaded.

"If we are to get into Baltimore at all we must start," she said,
rising. "You ought to see a doctor as soon as possible."

"Hush," I said warningly. "Don't mention the arm, please; it is asleep
now. You may rouse it."

"If I only had a hat," she reflected. "It wouldn't need to be much of
one, but--" She gave a little cry and darted to the corner. "Look," she
said triumphantly, "the very thing. With the green streamers tied up in
a bow, like this--do you suppose the child would mind? I can put five
dollars or so here--that would buy a dozen of them."

It was a queer affair of straw, that hat, with a round crown and a rim
that flopped dismally. With a single movement she had turned it up at
one side and fitted it to her head. Grotesque by itself, when she wore
it it was a thing of joy.

Evidently the lack of head covering had troubled her, for she was elated
at her find. She left me, scrawling a note of thanks and pinning it
with a bill to the table-cloth, and ran up-stairs to the mirror and the
promised soap and water.

I did not see her when she came down. I had discovered a bench with
a tin basin outside the kitchen door, and was washing, in a helpless,
one-sided way. I felt rather than saw that she was standing in the
door-way, and I made a final plunge into the basin.

"How is it possible for a man with only a right hand to wash his left
ear?" I asked from the roller towel. I was distinctly uncomfortable: men
are more rigidly creatures of convention than women, whether they admit
it or not. "There is so much soap on me still that if I laugh I will
blow bubbles. Washing with rain-water and home-made soap is like
motoring on a slippery road. I only struck the high places."

Then, having achieved a brilliant polish with the towel, I looked at the
girl.

She was leaning against the frame of the door, her face perfectly
colorless, her breath coming in slow, difficult respirations. The
erratic hat was pinned to place, but it had slid rakishly to one side.
When I realized that she was staring, not at me, but past me to the road
along which we had come, I turned and followed her gaze. There was
no one in sight: the lane stretched dust white in the sun,--no moving
figure on it, no sign of life.

CHAPTER X. MISS WEST'S REQUEST

The surprising change in her held me speechless. All the animation of
the breakfast table was gone: there was no hint of the re