At length the morning came when Nellie was to start on her journey.  Mr. Wilbur had arrived the night before, together with his sister, whose marble cheek and lusterless eye even then foretold the lonely grave which awaited her far away ’neath a foreign sky.  Durward and Mr. Douglass accompanied them as far as Cincinnati, where they took the cars for Buffalo.  Just before it rolled from the depot, a young man closely muffled, who had been watching our party, sprang into a car just in the rear of the one they had chosen, and taking the first vacant seat, abandoned himself to his own thoughts, which must have been very absorbing, as a violent shake was necessary, ere he heeded the call of “Your ticket, sir.”

Onward, onward flew the train, while faster and faster Nellie’s tears were dropping.  They had gushed forth when she saw the quivering chin and trembling lips of her gray-haired father, as he bade his only child good-bye, and now that he was gone, she wept on, never heeding her young friend, who strove in vain to call her attention to the fast receding hills of Kentucky, which she—­Mary—­was leaving forever.  Other thoughts than those of her father mingled with Nellie’s tears, for she could not forget John Jr., nor the hope cherished to the last that he would come to say farewell.  But he did not.  They had parted in coldness, if not in anger, and she might never see him again.

“Come, cheer up, Miss Douglass; I cannot suffer you to be so sad,” said Mr. Wilbur, placing himself by Nellie, and thoughtlessly throwing his arm across the back of the seat, while at the same time he bent playfully forward to peep under her bonnet.

And Nellie did look up, smiling through her tears, but she did not observe the flashing eyes which watched her through the window at the rear of the car.  Always restless and impatient of confinement, John Jr. had come out for a moment upon the platform, ostensibly to take the air, but really to see if it were possible to get a glimpse of Nellie.  She was sitting not far from the door, and he looked in, just in time to witness Mr. Wilbur’s action, which he of course construed just as his jealousy dictated.

“Confounded fool!” thought he. “I wouldn’t hug Nellie in the cars in good broad daylight, even if I was married to her!”

And returning to his seat; he wondered which was the silliest, “for Nellie to run off with Mr. Wilbur, or for himself to run after her.  Six of one and half a dozen of the other, I reckon,” said he; at the same time wrapping himself in his shawl, he feigned sleep at every station, for the sake of retaining his entire seat, and sometimes if the crowd was great, going so far as to snore loudly!

And thus they proceeded onward, Nellie never suspecting the close espionage kept upon her by John Jr., who once in the night, at a crowded depot, passed so closely to her that he felt her warm breath on his cheek.  And when, on the morning of the 15th, she sailed, she little thought who it was that followed her down to the water’s edge, standing on the last spot where she had stood, and watching with a swelling heart the vessel which bore her away.