“You needn’t be afraid,” he stammered.

“I’ve never been afraid before,” she said, hanging her weight away from him.  “Won’t you let me go?”

His grip relaxed slightly, then tightened again.  “Where to?”

“I don’t know,” said the appealing voice mournfully.

An inspiration came to Banneker.  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked quietly.

“Of every thing.  Of the night.”

He pressed the flash into her hand, turning the light upon himself.  “Look,” he said.

It seemed to him that she could not fail to read in his face the profound and ardent wish to help her; to comfort and assure an uneasy and frightened spirit wandering in the night.

He heard a little, soft sigh.  “I don’t know you,” said the voice.  “Do I?”

“No,” he answered soothingly as if to a child.  “I’m the station-agent here.  You must come in out of the wet.”

“Very well.”

He tossed an overcoat on over his pajamas, ran to the door and swung it open.  The tiny ray of light advanced, hesitated, advanced again.  She walked into the shack, and immediately the rain burst again upon the outer world.  Banneker’s fleeting impression was of a vivid but dimmed beauty.  He pushed forward a chair, found a blanket for her feet, lighted the “Quick-heater” oil-stove on which he did his cooking.  She followed him with her eyes, deeply glowing but vague and troubled.

“This is not a station,” she said.

“No.  It’s my shack.  Are you cold?”

“Not very.”  She shivered a little.

“You say that some one hurt you?”

“Yes.  They struck me.  It made my head feel queer.”

A murderous fury surged into his brain.  His hand twitched toward his revolver.

“The hoboes,” he whispered under his breath.  “But they didn’t rob you,” he said aloud, looking at the jeweled hand.

“No.  I don’t think so.  I ran away.”

“Where was it?”

“On the train.”

Enlightenment burst upon him.  “You’re sure—­” he began.  Then, “Tell me all you can about it.”

“I don’t remember anything.  I was in my stateroom in the car.  The door was open.  Some one must have come in and struck me.  Here.”  She put her left hand tenderly to her head.

Banneker, leaning over her, only half suppressed a cry.  Back of the temple rose a great, puffed, leaden-blue wale.

“Sit still,” he said.  “I’ll fix it.”

While he busied himself heating water, getting out clean bandages and gauze, she leaned back with half-closed eyes in which there was neither fear nor wonder nor curiosity:  only a still content.  Banneker washed the wound very carefully.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“My head feels queer.  Inside.”

“I think the hair ought to be cut away around the place.  Right here.  It’s quite raw.”

It was glorious hair.  Not black, as Cressey had described it in his hasty sketch of the unknown I.O.W.; too alive with gleams and glints of luster for that.  Nor were her eyes black, but rather of a deep-hued, clouded hazel, showing troubled shadows between their dark-lashed, heavy lids.  Yet Banneker made no doubt but that this was the missing girl of Cressey’s inquiry.