Her companion led the way, pushing through a smoking group of dark-faced men hanging round the entrance.
Inside, the car was thick, indeed, with smoke and the heavy exhalations of the night.

Men and women were sitting on the wooden benches; some women were cooking in the tiny stove-room attached to the car; children, half naked and unwashed, were playing on the floor; here and there a man was still asleep; while one old man was painfully conning a paper of "Homestead Regulations" which had been given him at Montreal, a lad of eighteen helping him; and close by another lad was writing a letter, his eyes passing dreamily from the paper to the Canadian landscape outside, of which he was clearly not conscious.

In a corner, surrounded by three or four other women, was the mother they had come to seek.

She held a wailing baby of about a year old in her arms.

At the sight of Elizabeth, the child stopped its wailing, and lay breathing fast and feebly, its large bright eyes fixed on the new-comer.