hted and drove stage between Milwaukee
and Madison, who remembered Rucker; and had given him passage to Madison
sometime, as he remembered it, in May or June--or it might have been
July, but it was certainly before the Fourth oL July.

"You hauled him--and his wife?" I asked.

"Him and his wife," said the man, "and a daughter."

"A daughter!" I said in astonishment. "They have no daughter."

"Might have been his daughter, and not her'n," said the stage-driver.
"Wife was a good deal younger than him, an' the girl was pretty old to
be her'n. Prob'ly his. Anyhow, he said she was his daughter."

"It wasn't his daughter," I cried.

"Well, you needn't get het up about it," said he; "I hain't to blame no
matter whose daughter she wasn't. She can travel with me any time she
wants to. Kind of a toppy, fast-goin', tricky little rip, with a
sorrel mane."

"I don't understand it," said I. "Did you notice his wife--whether she
seemed to be feeling well?"

"Looked bad," said he. "Never said nothing to nobody, and especially not
to the daughter. Used to go off to bed while the old man and the girl
held spiritualist doin's wherever we laid over. Went into trances, the
girl did, and the old man give lectures about the car of progress that
always rolls on and on and on, pervided you consult the spirits. Picked
up quite a little money 's we went along, too."

I sat in the barroom and thought about this for a long time. There was
something wrong about it. My mother's health was failing, that was plain
from what I had heard in Southport; but it did not seem to me, no matter
how weak and broken she might be, that she would have allowed Rucker to
pass off any stray trollop like the one described by the stage-driver as
his daughter, or would have traveled with them for a minute. But, I
thought, what could she do? And maybe she was trying to keep the affair
within bounds as far as possible. A good woman is easily deceived, too.
Perhaps she knew best, after all; and maybe she was going on and on with
Rucker from one misery to another in the hope that I, her only son, and
the only relative she had on earth, might follow and overtake her, and
help her out of the terrible situation in which, even I, as young and
immature as I was, could see that she must find herself. I had seen too
much of the under side of life not to understand the probable meaning of
this new and horrible thing. I remembered how insulted my mother was
that time so lon