There was a little more interest taken in the misfortune of an old purblind German and his son, who were found by the conductor to be a few hundred miles out of the direct course to their destination, and were with some trouble and the aid of an Americanized fellow-countryman made aware of the fact.  The old man then fell back in the prevailing apathy, and the child naturally cared nothing.  By and by came the unsparing train-boy on his rounds, bestrewing the passengers successively with papers, magazines, fine-cut tobacco, and packages of candy.  He gave the old man a package of candy, and passed on.  The German took it as the bounty of the American people, oddly manifested in a situation where he could otherwise have had little proof of their care.  He opened it and was sharing it with his son when the train-boy came back, and metallically, like a part of the machinery, demanded, “Ten cents!” The German stared helplessly, and the boy repeated, “Ten cents! ten cents!” with tiresome patience, while the other passengers smiled.  When it had passed through the alien’s head that he was to pay for this national gift and he took with his tremulous fingers from the recesses of his pocket-book a ten-cent note and handed it to his tormentor, some of the people laughed.  Among the rest, Basil and Isabel laughed, and then looked at each other with eyes of mutual reproach.

“Well, upon my word, my dear,” he said, “I think we’ve fallen pretty low.  I’ve never felt such a poor, shabby ruffian before.  Good heavens!  To think of our immortal souls being moved to mirth by such a thing as this,—­so stupid, so barren of all reason of laughter.  And then the cruelty of it!  What ferocious imbeciles we are!  Whom have I married?  A woman with neither heart nor brain!”

“O Basil, dear, pay him back the money-do.”

“I can’t.  That’s the worst of it.  He ’s money enough, and might justly take offense.  What breaks my heart is that we could have the depravity to smile at the mistake of a friendless stranger, who supposed he had at last met with an act of pure kindness.  It’s a thing to weep over.  Look at these grinning wretches!  What a fiendish effect their smiles have, through their cinders and sweat!  O, it’s the terrible weather; the despotism of the dust and heat; the wickedness of the infernal air.  What a squalid and loathsome company!”

At Buffalo, where they arrived late, they found themselves with several hours’ time on their hands before the train started for Niagara, and in the first moments of tedium, Isabel forgot herself into saying, “Don’t you think we’d have done better to go directly from Rochester to the Falls, instead of coming this way?”

“Why certainly.  I didn’t propose coming this way.”

“I know it, dear.  I was only asking,” said Isabel, meekly.  “But I should think you’d have generosity enough to take a little of the blame, when I wanted to come out of a romantic feeling for you.”