No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many
are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen
mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin
ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if
he does," said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, "I'll quit him and
skip."

"No danger, Bill," said I.

"How would the nice lady inside please you?" inquired the driver.

"Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!" sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
"She's after her brother. She's all right, though," he added,
approvingly.

At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now
spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.

Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding
as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant
war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his
relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to
the facts of his mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoing
cynic, "folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this
country!" But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next
station carefully lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too,"
he whispered to me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We
laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused,
as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept
sound between us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out
of that don't make soberness for somebody."

Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at
our next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she did
not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.

Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her
eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks
white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me
that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold.
I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart
understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, a