so quickly there
wasn't time to ask a question and then a monster came tearing,
puffing, hissing past them. Steve's eyes almost started from their
sockets and when it was past he sank back limp and quivering.

"Why, chile, didn't ye nuver see no railroad trains afore?" said the
good mother.

Steve managed to say, "No," and then the children told him all the
astonishing things about railroads. To his mingled joy and terror
another came along from the opposite direction when they had driven on
about a mile further, and this time it came more slowly, making a
full stop near them.

"Whut air they a-doin' that for?" asked Steve, and when it was
explained that they had stopped for fuel or water, there being no
station near, a quivering light broke over his face, and remembering
his watch as his mind tried to grasp new sources of motion, he said:

"They're jes' a-stoppin' to wind hit up, then."

Very soon after this they came to a cabin by the roadside and all the
family within poured out to see the strangers.

"Won't you light and hitch?" drawled the man of the house, but the boy
driver refused, saying they wanted "to git to their kin afore night."
He suggested to Steve, however, that if he wanted to go to the city he
had better stop there, for they were going further from any station
than he would be there. The folks of the cabin were hearty in their
invitation to the boy when they had heard his story, even the fact of
his probable helplessness for a while not marring the beauty of their
royal hospitality. So Steve was carefully lifted out and helped in
among new friends.

The little cabin was full to overflowing with boys and girls, one girl
of fifteen fondling her baby as she would a big doll, in ignorant,
unlawful, and one perhaps should say innocent motherhood. She, a waif
herself, had come along needing shelter and they had taken her in.

When Steve had had his supper pallets were spread everywhere about the
cabin floor upon which the family went to rest fully clothed, after
the fashion of mountaineers, and to the boy the night was a great
contrast from the previous one in the loneliness of the woods. He
thought of his own home as he had never done since he left it,
wondering if his father and Mirandy would like to see him, but he
never dreamed of how they had searched the woods for miles around when
he was missed the second day after leaving. His failure to return the
first day and night they thought little o