him; with the net result that two Mexicans, who were loafing near enough to hear, grinned with admiring amusement.  The woman stood a little apart from the others.  Coldly indifferent alike to the man’s cursing and coughing and to the daughter’s ejaculations, she appeared to be looking at the mountains.  But the young man fancied that, once or twice, as he faced about at the end of his beat, her eyes were turned in his direction.

When the Fairlands train came in, the three found seats conveniently turned, near the forward end of the car.  The young man, in passing, glanced down; and the woman, who had taken the chair next to the aisle, looked up full into his face.

Again, as their eyes met, the man felt—­as when they had stood so close together on the platform of the observation car—­that she did not shrink from him.  It was only for an instant.  Then, glancing about for a seat, he saw another face—­a face, in its outlines, so like the one into which he had just looked, and yet so different—­so far removed in its expression and meaning—­that it fixed his attention instantly—­compelling his interest.

As this woman sat looking from the car window away toward the distant mountain peaks, the young man thought he had never seen a more perfect profile; nor a countenance that expressed such a beautiful blending of wistful longing, of patient fortitude, and saintly resignation.  It was the face of a Madonna,—­but a Madonna after the crucifixion,—­pathetic in its lonely sorrow, inspiring in its spiritual strength, and holy in its purity and freedom from earthly passions.

She was near his mother’s age; and looking at her—­as he moved down the aisle—­his mother’s face, as he had known it before their last meeting, came to him with startling vividness.  For an instant, he paused, moved to take the chair beside her; but the next two seats were vacant, and he had no excuse for intruding.  Arranging his grips, he quickly seated himself next to the window; and again, with eager interest, turned toward the woman in the chair ahead.  Involuntarily, he started with astonishment and pity.

The woman—­still gazing from the window at the distant mountain peaks, and seemingly unconscious of her surroundings—­presented now, to the man’s shocked and compassionate gaze, the other side of her face.  It was hideously disfigured by a great scar that—­covering the entire cheek and neck—­distorted the corner of the mouth, drew down the lower lid of the eye, and twisted her features into an ugly caricature.  Even the ear, half hidden under the soft, gray-threaded hair, had not escaped, but was deformed by the same dreadful agent that had wrought such ruin to one of the loveliest countenances the man had ever looked upon.

When the train stopped at Fairlands, and the passengers crowded into the aisle to make their way out, of the characters belonging to my story, the woman with the man and his daughter went first.  Following them, a half car-length of people between, went the woman with the disfigured face.