That rumor had troubled Ethie greatly, and was the reason why she did not improve as the physician hoped she would when she first came to Clifton.

Sitting down upon the bridge across the creek, she bowed her head in her hands and went over again all the dreadful past, blaming herself now more than she did Richard, and wishing that much could be undone of all that had transpired to make her what she was, and while she sat there the Western train appeared in view, and, mechanically rising to her feet, Ethie turned her steps back toward the Cure, standing aside to let the long train go by, and feeling, when it passed her, a strange, sudden throb, as if it were fraught with more than ordinary interest to her.

Usually, that Western train, the distant roll of whose wheels and the echo of whose scream quickened so many hearts waiting for news from home, had no special interest for her.

It never brought her a letter.

Her name was never called in the exciting distribution which took place in the parlor or on the long piazza after the eight-o'clock mail had arrived, and so she seldom heeded it; but to-night there was a difference, and she watched the long line curiously until it passed the corner by the old brown farmhouse and disappeared from view.