A stranger came to Winesburg and saw in the child what the father did not see.  He was a tall, redhaired young man who was almost always drunk.  Sometimes he sat in a chair before the New Willard House with Tom Hard, the father.  As Tom talked, declaring there could be no God, the stranger smiled and winked at the bystanders.  He and Tom became friends and were much together.

The stranger was the son of a rich merchant of Cleveland and had come to Winesburg on a mission.  He wanted to cure himself of the habit of drink, and thought that by escaping from his city associates and living in a rural community he would have a better chance in the struggle with the appetite that was destroying him.

His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success.  The dullness of the passing hours led to his drinking harder than ever.  But he did succeed in doing something.  He gave a name rich with meaning to Tom Hard’s daughter.

One evening when he was recovering from a long debauch the stranger came reeling along the main street of the town.  Tom Hard sat in a chair before the New Willard House with his daughter, then a child of five, on his knees.  Beside him on the board sidewalk sat young George Willard.  The stranger dropped into a chair beside them.  His body shook and when he tried to talk his voice trembled.

It was late evening and darkness lay over the town and over the railroad that ran along the foot of a little incline before the hotel.  Somewhere in the distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast from the whistle of a passenger engine.  A dog that had been sleeping in the roadway arose and barked.  The stranger began to babble and made a prophecy concerning the child that lay in the arms of the agnostic.

“I came here to quit drinking,” he said, and tears began to run down his cheeks.  He did not look at Tom Hard, but leaned forward and stared into the darkness as though seeing a vision.  “I ran away to the country to be cured, but I am not cured.  There is a reason.”  He turned to look at the child who sat up very straight on her father’s knee and returned the look.

The stranger touched Tom Hard on the arm.  “Drink is not the only thing to which I am addicted,” he said.  “There is something else.  I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.  That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean.  It makes my destruction inevitable, you see.  There are few who understand that.”

The stranger became silent and seemed overcome with sadness, but another blast from the whistle of the passenger engine aroused him.  “I have not lost faith.  I proclaim that.  I have only been brought to the place where I know my faith will not be realized,” he declared hoarsely.  He looked hard at the child and began to address her, paying no more attention to the father.  “There is a woman coming,” he said, and his voice was now sharp and earnest.  “I have missed her, you see.  She did not come in my time.  You may be the woman.  It would be like fate to let me stand in her presence once, on such an evening as this, when I have destroyed myself with drink and she is as yet only a child.”