The Man in Lower Ten

r behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through the grit. Now and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to the track

dden, but the smoke cloud hung heavy and dense. For the first tim

on the bank I will go back and make some inquiries. I'v

as gone. "Please don't go back," she said. "I am afraid i

ion of mind. I was beginning to realize that I had lacked the morning grace of a shave, that I looked like some lost hope of yesterday, and that my left shoe pinched outrageously. A man does not rise triumphant a

l dark woman who had occupied lower eleven. She was half crouching beside the road, her black hair about her shoulders, and an ugly bruise over her eye. She did not

e she turned and glanced at my bandag

," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this

behind us the pillar of smoke. I thought I knew of a trolley line somewhere in the direction we were going

t it queer-or perhaps it's my state of mind-but I keep w

suggested this, cautiously, she said it was troublesome and got in her eyes when it was loose. So she gathered it up, while I held a row of little shell combs and pins, and when it was done it was vastly becoming, too. Funny abo

rgot that because I know who you are, you know nothing

k to meet him! Well, what difference did it make, anyhow? We had been thrown together by the merest chance. In an hour or two at the most we would be back in civilization and

t's very good of you to let me know, Miss West. I have b

night?" She was

. Was it any wonder McKnight was crazy

was my hostess. We-we were on our way to Washington together." She spoke slowly, as if she wished to give the minim

ut seeing you," I floundered, finding it necessary to s

not intend to go home. I-well, it d

plicate of the other, had come quickly down the road. She took

at the second pigsty, you will find breakfast on the table and a coffee-pot on the stove. And

toward the excitement and the railroad. I got

d, "we will find the breakfast I promised you

ry step the broken ends of the bone grated together. We found the farm-house without difficulty, and I re

uster. "Behold the coffee-pot!" And then I put down the

k, and a despairing voice was saying, "Oh, I don't seem to

a what came over me. It was the shoes, I think: the left one is a red-ho

n every tone of her voice that morning. Before long my loyalty to McKnight would step between me and the girl he loved: life would develop new complexities. In those early hours after the wreck, full of pain as they were, there was nothing of th

d from the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot fluid that smelled like coffee and tasted like nothing that I have ever swallowed. We

ends, we laughed together at my feeble witticisms, but we put the horror behind us resolutely. Af

had surprised early in the day, before the wreck. I caught it once, when, breakfast over, she was tightening the sling that held the broken arm. I had prolonged the morning meal as much as I c

we must start," she said, rising. "You o

t mention the arm, please; it i

ed to the corner. "Look," she said triumphantly, "the very thing. With the green streamers tied up in a bow, li

pped dismally. With a single movement she had turned it up at one side and fitt

find. She left me, scrawling a note of thanks and pinning it with a bill to th

de the kitchen door, and was washing, in a helpless, one-sided way. I felt rather tha

e: men are more rigidly creatures of convention than women, whether they admit it or not. "There is so much soap on me still that if I l

illiant polish with the to

pinned to place, but it had slid rakishly to one side. When I realized that she was staring, not at me, but past me to the road along which we had