The railway station was crowded.

The storm had come up suddenly at the close of a fair day.  It was the hour, too, at which tradespeople, clerks, and laborers were returning home to the suburbs, and at which the steamboat express for New York was being made up—­although it was not an encouraging night for the latter trip.

The pretty young woman with the red hair had looked through the door near the tracks, and glanced to the right, where the New York express should be.  The gate was still closed.  She was much too early!  For a second she hesitated.  She glanced about quickly, and the look was not without apprehension.  It was evident that she did not see the man who was following her, and who seemed to have been waiting for her near the outer door.  He did not speak, nor attract her attention in any way.  The crowd served him in that!

After a moment’s hesitation, she turned toward the ladies’ waiting room, and just as she was about to enter, the man behind addressed her—­and the word was said so low that no one near heard it—­though, by the start she gave, it might have been a pistol shot.

“Dora!”

She stood perfectly still.  The color died out of her face; but only for an instant.  She looked alarmed, then perplexed, and then she smiled.  She was evidently a young woman of resources.

The man was a stalwart handsome fellow of his class—­though it was almost impossible to guess what that was save that it was not that which the world labels by exterior signs “gentleman.”  He might easily have been some sort of a mechanic.  He was certainly neither a clerk nor the follower of any of the unskilled professions.  He was surely countrybred, for there was a largeness in his expression as well as his bearing that spoke distinctly of broad vistas and exercise.  He was tall and broad-shouldered.  He stood well on his feet, hampered as little by his six feet of height and fourteen stone weight as he was by the size of his hands.  One would have easily backed him to ride well and shoot straight, though he probably never saw the inside of what is called a “drawing-room.”

There was the fire of a mighty emotion in his deep-set eyes.  There were signs of a tremendous animal force in his square chin and thick neck, but it was balanced well by his broad brow and wide-set eyes.  He seemed at this moment to hold himself in check with a rigid stubbornness that answered for his New England origin, and Puritan ancestry!  Indeed, at the moment he addressed the woman, but for his eyes, he might have seemed as indifferent as any of the stone figures that upheld the iron girders of the roof above him!

Still smiling archly she moved forward into the waiting room and, passing through the dense crowd that hung about the door, crossed the room to an open space.

Without a word the man followed.

The room was dimly lighted.  The crowd that surged about them, coming and going, and sometimes pressing close on every side, seemed not to note them.  And, if they had, they would have seen nothing more remarkable than an extremely pretty young woman conversing quietly with a big fellow in a reefer and long boots—­a rig he carried well.