He seldom looked at her but was found staring from the window whenever she turned her eyes toward him.  At first she scarcely noticed the man, but the longer he remained aboard the train the more she speculated as to where he might be going.  Whenever she entered the dining car he took a notion to eat at that time, but found a seat as far removed from her as possible.  She imagined she had escaped him when she went to the sleeper, but next morning as she passed out he was standing in the vestibule and a few moments later he was in the diner where she was breakfasting.

It was now that the girl first conceived the idea that he might be following her for a purpose, dogging her footsteps to discover at what station she left the train.  And, when she asked herself why the stranger should be so greatly concerned with her movements, she remembered that she was going to Gran’pa Jim and that at one time an officer had endeavored to discover, through her, her grandfather’s whereabouts.

“If this little man,” she mused, glancing at his blank, inexpressive features, “happens to be a detective, and knows who I am, he may think I will lead him directly to Colonel Weatherby, whom he may then arrest.  Gran’pa Jim is innocent, of course, but I know he doesn’t wish to be arrested, because he left Beverly suddenly to avoid it.  And,” she added with a sudden feinting of the heart, “if this suspicion is true I am actually falling into the trap and leading an officer to my grandfather’s retreat.”

This reflection rendered the girl very uneasy and caused her to watch the fat-nosed man guardedly all through that tedious day.  She constantly hoped he would leave the train at some station and thus prove her fears to be groundless, but always he remained in his seat, patiently eyeing the landscape through his window.

Late in the afternoon another suspicious circumstance aroused her alarm.  The conductor of the train, as he passed through the car, paused at the rear end and gazed thoughtfully at the little man huddled in the rear seat, who seemed unconscious of his regard.  After watching him a while the conductor suddenly turned his head and looked directly at Mary Louise, with a curious expression, as if connecting his two passengers.  Then he went on through the train, but the girl’s heart was beating high and the little man, while seeming to eye the fleeting landscape through the window, wriggled somewhat uneasily in his seat,

Mary Louise now decided he was a detective.  She suspected that he had been sent to Beverly, after the other man left, to watch her movements, with the idea that sooner or later she would rejoin her grandfather.  Perhaps, had any letter come for her from her mother or Gran’pa Jim, this officer would have seized it and obtained from it the address of the man he was seeking.  That would account for their failure to write her; perhaps they were aware of the plot and therefore dared not send her a letter.