One thing, however, recalled her to earth and prosaic mundane affairs:  her supply of money was rapidly getting dangerously low.  Barring accident, she would have enough to get her to Dyer, where Eddie was to meet her.  But suppose they should be snowed up for a day or two?  Only an hour before she had been thrilled with an account of just such an experience which a man in the seat in front of her was recounting to his companion.  Well, if that happened, she would either have to go hungry or beg food from the more affluent of her fellow-passengers!  Fortunately she was not obliged to put their generosity to the test.  The train arrived at Dyer without accident only a few minutes behind the scheduled time.

There were a number of people at the station as Nora alighted.  For a moment she had a horrid fear that either she had been put off at the wrong place or that her brother had failed to meet her.  Certainly none of the fur-coated figures were in the least familiar.  But almost at once one of the men detached himself from the waiting group on the platform and after one hesitating second came toward her.

“Nora, my child, I hardly knew you!  I was forgetting that you would be a grown woman,” and Nora was half smothered in a furry embrace and kissed on both cheeks before she was quite sure that the advancing stranger was her brother.

“Oh, Eddie, dear, I didn’t know you at all.  But how can one be expected to with that great cap covering the upper part of your face and a coat collar hiding nearly all the rest.  But you really haven’t changed, now that I get a look at you.  I daresay I have altered more than you.  But I was little more than a child when you went away.”

“Well, we have quite a little drive ahead of us,” said Eddie as, having himself helped to carry Nora’s trunks to a nondescript-looking vehicle to which were attached two horses, he motioned to Nora to get in.  “I expect you won’t be sorry to have a little air after being so long in a stuffy car.”

Nora noticed that he gave the man who had helped him with the trunks no tip and that they called each other “Joe” and “Ed.”  This was democracy with a vengeance.  She made a little face of disapproval.

Nora never forgot that drive.  In the light of after-events it seemed to have cut her off more sharply from all the old life than either the crossing of the pathless sea or the long overland journey.  It was taken for the most part in silence, Eddie’s attention being largely taken up with his team.  Also Nora noted that he seemed to feel the cold more than she did, as he kept his coat collar turned up all the way.  She herself was so occupied with her thoughts that she had no sense of either time or distance.