s a
through south-bound express. Tom was meaning to sit up all night and
think; and the most comfortless seat in the smoking-car would answer.
There would be the meeting with his father and mother in the morning,
and he thought he should not dare to let sleep come between. He had a
firm grip of himself now, and it must not be relaxed until that meeting
was over.

But the preceptor had already stepped to the ticket window. "That
sleeping-car reservation for Thomas Gordon--have you secured it?" he
asked of the agent; and Tom heard the reply: "Lower ten in car number
two." That disposed of the seat in the smoker and the bit of penance,
and he was unreasonable enough to be resentful for favors.

Hence, when the train came to a stand beside the platform, he went
straight to the Pullman, ignoring his keeper. But the preceptor followed
him to the car step, held out his hand coldly, and said: "I'm sorry for
you, Gordon. Good-by."

Tom drew himself up stiffly, overlooking the extended hand.

"'Good-by'--that is 'God be with you,' isn't it, Mr. Martin? I reckon
you don't mean that. Good night." And this is the way Thomas Jefferson
turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears
in his eyes and an angry word on his lips.

The Pintsch lights were burning brightly in the Pullman, and these--and
the tears--blinded him. Some of the sections in the middle of the car
were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of
the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left in the aisle, the train
started.

"Lower ten, sah," said the black boy, and went about his business in the
linen locker. But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the
car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl
in a gray traveling coat and hat, sitting with her face to the window.

"Why, you--somebody!" she exclaimed, turning to surprise him in the act
of glowering down on her. "Do you know, I thought there might be just
one chance in a thousand that you'd go home for Christmas, so I made the
porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba. Why don't you sit
down?"

Tom edged into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all in
miserable, comfortless silence. Then he blurted out:

"If I'd had any idea you were on this train, I'd have walked."

Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how
much sweeter the low voice was growing, and how much clearer the blu