be at the station to meet me--I can
look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off.
That makes it all right, doesn't it?" And she smiled in open
confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon.

But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. "And who pays
for the ticket?"

"Oh!" Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a
contagious laugh. "I do--of course. I'll take a ticket to--just name
over the stations, please?"

The conductor growled them forth: "Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville,
Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars--"

"What's that last--Greyfriars? I'll take a ticket to Greyfriars." She
said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a
mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.

When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled,
Patsy allowed herself what she called a "temporary attack of private
prostration."

"Idiot!" she groaned in self-address. "Ye are the biggest fool in two
continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he
were topside o' green earth to hear." Whereupon she gripped one
vagabond glove with the other--in fellow misery; and for the second
time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.

* * * * *

The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway
and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it
started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another
furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had
long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an
individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such
failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her
determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come
for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete
oblivion.

She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for
spice--and artistic finish--"After that--the devil take him!" when
the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied
herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly
something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of
the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in
the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim
outlines only. But those outlines were un