Virginia took the direction leading to the station. Many a time she had watched the trains rush by on their way to New York, but never in those multitudinous yesterdays had it entered her mind that some day she would go over that same way, to be gone possibly forever. The wind was blowing at such a terrific rate that Jinnie could scarcely walk. There was no fear in her heart, only deep solemnity and a sense of awe at the magnificence of a storm. She had left the farmhouse so suddenly that the loneliness of parting had not then been forced upon her as it was now; the realization was settling slowly upon the clouded young mind.
She was a mere puppet in the hands of an inexorable fate, which had shown her little mercy or benevolence.
Out of sight of the Merriweather homestead, she kept to the path along the highway, now and then shifting the pail from one hand to the other, and clasping the beloved fiddle to her breast. Once she looked down to find Milly Ann peeping above the rim of the pail. Jinnie could see the glint of her greenish eyes. She stopped and, with a tenderly spoken admonition, covered her more closely with the roller towel. When the lighted station-house glimmered through the falling snow, Jinnie sighed with relief.
"I couldn't 've carried you and the fiddle much farther, Milly Ann," she murmured.
At that moment a tall figure, herculean in size, loomed out of the night and advanced hastily. The man's head was bent forward against the storm. Virginia caught a glimpse of his face as he passed in the streak of light thrown out from the station.
He sprang to the platform and disappeared in the doorway. Jinnie saw him plainly when she, too, entered, and her eyes followed him as he went out.
She had never seen him before. Like the man in the Merriweather kitchen, he bore the stamp of the city upon him.
Virginia bought her ticket as her father had directed, and while the pail was still on the floor, she bent to examine Milly Ann and the kittens. The latter were asleep, but the mother-cat lazily opened her eyes to greet, with a purr, the soft touch of Jinnie's fingers. The girl waited inside the room until the shriek of the engine's whistle told her of its approach; then, with the fiddle and the pail, she walked to the platform.
The long, snakelike train was edging the hill, its headlight bearing down the track in one straight, glittering line.
For the first time in her life, Jinnie felt really afraid. In other days, with beating heart, she had hugged close to the roadside as the monster slipped either into the station and stopped, or rushed around the curve. Tonight she was going aboard, over into a strange land among strange people.