She was near the last factory when she met a man hastening along
with bent shoulders, of intent, middle-aged progress. After he had
passed her with a careless glance at the small, swift figure, she
smelt coffee. He was carrying home a pound for his breakfast supply.
That suddenly made her cry, though she did not know why. That
familiar odor of home and the wontedness of life made her isolation
on her little atom of the unusual more pitiful. The man turned round
sharply when she sobbed. "Hullo! what's the matter, sis?" he called
back, in a pleasant, hoarse voice. Ellen did not answer; she fled as
if she had wings on her feet. The man had many children of his own,
and was accustomed to their turbulence over trifles. He kept on,
thinking that there was a sulky child who had been sent on an errand
against her will, that it was not late, and she was safe enough on
that road. He resumed his calculation as to whether his income would
admit of a new coal-stove that winter. He was a workman in a
factory, with one accumulative interest in life--coal-stoves. He
bought and traded and swapped coal-stoves every winter with keenest
enthusiasm. Now he had one in his mind which he had just viewed in a
window with the rapture of an artist. It had a little nickel
statuette on the top, and that quite crowded Ellen out of his mind,
which had but narrow accommodations.

So Ellen kept on unmolested, though her heart was beating loud with
fright. When she came into the brilliantly lighted stretch of Main
Street, which was the business centre of the city, her childish mind
was partly diverted from herself. Ellen had not been down town many
times of an evening, and always in hand of her hurrying father or
mother. Now she had run away and cut loose from all restrictions of
time; there was an eternity for observation before her, with no call