"A daughter!" I said in astonishment. "They have no daughter."

"Might have been his daughter, and not her'n," said the stage-driver.
"Wife was a good deal younger than him, an' the girl was pretty old to
be her'n. Prob'ly his. Anyhow, he said she was his daughter."

"It wasn't his daughter," I cried.

"Well, you needn't get het up about it," said he; "I hain't to blame no
matter whose daughter she wasn't. She can travel with me any time she
wants to. Kind of a toppy, fast-goin', tricky little rip, with a
sorrel mane."

"I don't understand it," said I. "Did you notice his wife--whether she
seemed to be feeling well?"

"Looked bad," said he. "Never said nothing to nobody, and especially not
to the daughter. Used to go off to bed while the old man and the girl
held spiritualist doin's wherever we laid over. Went into trances, the
girl did, and the old man give lectures about the car of progress that
always rolls on and on and on, pervided you consult the spirits. Picked
up quite a little money 's we went along, too."

I sat in the barroom and thought about this for a long time. There was
something wrong about it. My mother's health was failing, that was plain
from what I had heard in Southport; but it did not seem to me, no matter
how weak and broken she might be, that she would have allowed Rucker to
pass off any stray trollop like the one described by the stage-driver as
his daughter, or would have traveled with them for a minute. But, I
thought, what could she do? And maybe she was trying to keep the affair