hine threw the train, in long black shadow, over the hot earth.
Forward somewhere they were hammering. The girl said nothing, but her
profile was strained and anxious.

"I--if you have lost anything," I began, "I wish you would let me try to
help. Not that my own success is anything to boast of."

She hardly glanced at me. It was not flattering. "I have not
been robbed, if that is what you mean," she replied quietly. "I
am--perplexed. That is all."

There was nothing to say to that. I lifted my hat--the other fellow's
hat--and turned to go back to my car. Two or three members of the train
crew, including the conductor, were standing in the shadow talking.
And at that moment, from a farm-house near came the swift clang of the
breakfast bell, calling in the hands from barn and pasture. I turned
back to the girl.

"We may be here for an hour," I said, "and there is no buffet car on. If
I remember my youth, that bell means ham and eggs and country butter and
coffee. If you care to run the risk--"

"I am not hungry," she said, "but perhaps a cup of coffee--dear me, I
believe I am hungry," she finished. "Only--" She glanced back of her.

"I can bring your companion," I suggested, without enthusiasm. But the
young woman shook her head.

"She is not hungry," she objected, "and she is very--well, I know she
wouldn't come. Do you suppose we could make it if we run?"

"I haven't any idea," I said cheerfully. "Any old train would be better
than this one, if it does leave us behind."

"Yes. Any train would be better than this one," she repeated gravely.
I found myself watching her changing expression. I had spoken two dozen
words to her and already I felt that I knew the lights and shades in
her voice,--I, who had always known how a woman rode to hounds, and who
never could have told the color of her hair.

I stepped down on the ties and turned to assist her, and together we
walked back to where the conductor and the porter from our car were in
close conversation. Instinctively my hand went to my cigarette pocket
and came out empty. She saw the gesture.

"If you want to smoke, you may," she said. "I have a big cousin who
smokes all the time. He says I am 'kippered.'"

I drew out the gun-metal cigarette case and opened it. But this most
commonplace action had an extraordinary result: the girl beside me
stopped dead still and stood staring at it with fascinated eyes.

"Is--where did you get that?" she demanded, with a c