heard. Mary
was just turning to offer a gentle check to this rising volubility, when
up jumped the little one to a standing posture on the gentleman's knee,
and, all unsolicited and with silent clapping of hands, plumped out her
full name:--

"Alice Sevier Witchlin'!"

The husband threw a quick glance toward his wife; but she avoided it
and called Mary's attention to the sunset as seen through the opposite
windows. Mary looked and responded with expressions of admiration, but
was visibly disquieted, and the next moment called her child to her.

"My little girl mustn't talk so loud and fast in the cars," she said,
with tender pleasantness, standing her upon the seat and brushing back
the stray golden waves from the baby's temples, and the brown ones, so
like them, from her own. She turned a look of amused apology to the
gentleman, and added, "She gets almost boisterous sometimes," then gave
her regard once more to her offspring, seating the little one beside her
as in the beginning, and answering her musical small questions with
composing yeas and nays.

"I suppose," she said, after a pause and a look out through the
window,--"I suppose we ought soon to be reaching M---- station,
now, should we not?"

"What, in Tennessee? Oh! no," replied the gentleman. "In ordinary times
we should; but at this slow rate we cannot nearly do it. We're on a
road, you see, that was destroyed by the retreating army and made over
by the Union forces. Besides, there are three trains of troops ahead of
us, that must stop and unload between here and there, and keep you
waiting, there's no telling how long."

"Then I'll get there in the night!" exclaimed Mary.

"Yes, probably after midnight."

"Oh, I shouldn't have _thought_ of coming before to-morrow if I had
known that!" In the extremity of her dismay she rose half from her seat
and looked around with alarm.

"Have you no friends expecting to receive you there?" asked the lady.

"Not a soul! And the conductor says there's no lodging-place nearer than
three miles"--

"And that's gone now," said the gentleman.

"You'll have to get out at the same station with us," said the lady, her
manner kindness itself and at the same time absolute.

"I think you have claims on us, anyhow, that we'd like to pay."

"Oh! impossible," said Mary. "You're certainly mistaking me."

"I think you have," insisted the lady; "that is, if your name is
Richling."

Mary blushed.

"I don't think you k