“A beastly mob!” he exclaimed, as he gripped his friend’s hand.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring my wife nearer than the back platform.”

Aldous turned to Joanne.  He was still half in a daze.  His heart was choking him with its swift and excited beating.  Even as he introduced her to Blackton the voice kept crying in his brain that she had expected to find some one in this crowd whom she knew.  For a space it was as if the Joanne whom he had known had slipped away from him.  She had told him about the grave, but this other she had kept from him.  Something that was almost anger surged up in him.  His face bore marks of the strain as he watched her greet Blackton.  In an instant, it seemed to him, she had regained a part of her composure.  Blackton saw nothing but the haggard lines about her eyes and the deep pallor in her face, which he ascribed to fatigue.

“You’re tired, Miss Gray,” he said.  “It’s a killing ride up from Miette these days.  If we can get through this mob we’ll have supper within fifteen minutes!”

With a word to Aldous he began worming his long, lean body ahead of them.  An instant Joanne’s face was very close to Aldous’, so close that he felt her breath, and a tendril of her hair touched his lips.  In that instant her eyes looked into his steadily, and he felt rush over him a sudden shame.  If she was seeking and expecting, it was to him more than ever that she was now looking for protection.  The haunting trouble in her eyes, their entreaty, their shining faith in him told him that, and he was glad that she had not seen his sudden fear and suspicion.  She clung more closely to him as they followed Blackton.  Her little fingers held his arm as if she were afraid some force might tear him from her.  He saw that she was looking quickly at the faces about them with that same questing mystery in her search.

At the thin outer edge of the crowd Blackton dropped back beside them.  A few steps more and they came to the end of the platform, where a buckboard was waiting in the dim light of one of the station lamps.  Blackton introduced Joanne, and assisted her into the seat beside his wife.

“We’ll leave you ladies to become acquainted while we rustle the baggage,” he said.  “Got the checks, Aldous?”

Joanne had given Aldous two checks on the train, and he handed them to Blackton.  Together they made their way to the baggage-room.

“Thought Miss Gray would have some luggage, so I had one of my men come with another team,” he explained.  “We won’t have to wait.  I’ll give him the checks.”

Before they returned to the buckboard, Aldous halted his friend.

“I couldn’t say much in that telegram,” he said.  “If Miss Gray wasn’t a bit tired and unstrung I’d let her explain.  I want you to tell Mrs. Blackton that she has come to Tete Jaune on a rather unpleasant mission, old man.  Nothing less than to attend to the grave of a—­a near relative.”