"I have come from Michigan."

"Oh!" said the woman, with awe. "It's a long way," she remarked
presently.

"Yes, it is," replied Rebecca, conclusively.

Still the other woman was not daunted; there was something which
she determined to know, possibly roused thereto by a vague sense of
incongruity in the other's appearance. "It's a long ways to come
and leave a family," she remarked with painful slyness.

"I ain't got any family to leave," returned Rebecca shortly.

"Then you ain't--"

"No, I ain't."

"Oh!" said the woman.

Rebecca looked straight ahead at the race of the river.

It was a long ferry. Finally Rebecca herself waxed unexpectedly
loquacious. She turned to the other woman and inquired if she knew
John Dent's widow who lived in Ford Village. "Her husband died
about three years ago," said she, by way of detail.

The woman started violently. She turned pale, then she flushed;
she cast a strange glance at her husband, who was regarding both
women with a sort of stolid keenness.