he came back,
ask him a question: then he came up to me: he looked anxious. 'Ellen,'
he says, 'don't be troubled, but Joe is not here. The regiment went on
to Columbus two days ago.' He said there'd be no trouble, that I could
follow him on the railroad."

The Captain kept her on board until evening, when the train for Columbus
started; then he went with her, secured her a seat, and arranged her
comfortably. He had daughters at home, he told Ellen, bidding her keep
quiet until she reached Columbus, then tell the name of her brother's
regiment, and she would be with him in twenty minutes. "I am sure," he
added, "Joe will get a furlough to attend to you."

The old boatman paid for her passage himself, his last charge being to
"take care of her money," which made Ellen, when he was gone, remove it
from her basket and carry it in a roll in her hand. There was a dull
oil-lamp flickering in one end of the car, men's faces peering at her
from every dusky corner, the friendly Captain's nodding a grave good-bye
from the door,--and then, with a shrill cry, the train shot off into the
night. It must be a lonesome, foreboding moment to any timid woman
starting alone at night on a long journey, with the possible death
waiting for her in every throb of the engine or coupling of the cars: so
it was no wonder that the poor "natural," rushing thus into a world that
opened suddenly wider and darker before her, "Joe," her one clear point,
going back, back, out of sight, and withal a childish, unspeakable
terror at the shrieking, fire-belching engine, should have cowered down
on her seat, afraid to move or speak. So the night passed. "I was afraid
to cry," said Ellen.

An hour or two after midnight the train reached Columbus; the depot
dingy and dark; one or two far-off lamps bringing the only light out of
the foggy night.

"The cars stopped with a great cry, and the people all rushed out. It
seemed to me a minute and they were all gone. Nobody was left but me;
when I got up and went to the car-door, they looked just like shadows
going into the darkness, and beyond that there was a world of black
houses. You've seen Columbus, Sir?"

"No."

"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,