The mystery of his marriage was growing from a mere untoward incident of a night’s carouse into a baffling thing which hung over him like an impending doom.  He was not the sort of man who marries easily.  It seemed incredible that he could really have done it; more incredible that he could have done it and then have wiped the slate of his memory clean; with the crowning impossibility that a strange young woman could come into town, marry him, and afterward depart and no man know who she was, whence she had come, or where she had gone.  Ford stepped suddenly off the porch and bored his way through the blizzard toward the depot.  The station agent would be able to answer the last question, at any rate.

The agent, however, proved disappointingly ignorant of the matter.  He reminded Ford that there had not been time to buy a ticket, and that the girl had been compelled to run down the platform to reach the train before it started, and that the wheels began to turn before she was up the steps of the day coach.

“And don’t you remember turning around and saying to me:  ’I’m a poor married man, but you can’t notice the scar,’ or something like that?” The agent was plainly interested and desirous of rendering any assistance possible, and also rather diffident about discussing so delicate a matter with a man like Ford.

Ford drummed his fingers impatiently upon the shelf outside the ticket window.  “I don’t remember a darned thing about it,” he confessed glumly.  “I can’t say I enjoy running all around town trying to find out who it was I married, and why I married her, and where she went afterwards, but that’s just the kinda fix I’m in, Lew.  I don’t suppose she came here and did it just for fun—­and I can’t figure out any other reason, unless she was plumb loco.  From all I can gather, she was a nice girl, and it seems she thought I was Frank Ford Cameron—­which I am not!” He laughed, as a man will laugh sometimes when he is neither pleased nor amused.

“I might ask McCreery—­he’s conductor on Fourteen.  He might remember where she wanted to go,” the agent suggested hesitatingly.  “And say!  What’s the matter with going up to Garbin and looking up the record?  She had to get the license there, and they’d have her name, age, place of residence, and—­and whether she’s white or black.”  The agent smiled uncertainly over his feeble attempt at a joke.  “I got a license for a friend once,” he explained hastily, when he saw that Ford’s face did not relax a muscle.  “There’s a train up in forty minutes—­”

“Sure, I’ll do that.”  Ford brightened.  “That must be what I’ve been trying to think of and couldn’t.  I knew there was some way of finding out.  Throw me a round-trip ticket, Lew.  Lordy me!  I can’t afford to let a real, live wife slip the halter like this and leave me stranded and not knowing a thing about her.  How much is it?”

The agent slid a dark red card into the mouth of his office stamp, jerked down the lever, and swung his head quickly toward the sounder chattering hysterically behind him.  His jaw slackened as he listened, and he turned his eyes vacantly upon Ford for a moment before he looked back at the instrument.