mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window.
Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To
disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.

The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded
that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour the
woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from which
she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he thought on
the whole most probable.

Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch
the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the
missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive
inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had
attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black
hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his
fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,--had he seen anybody answering to
some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not
noticed,--was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,--might
have had such a young man aboard,--there was two or three students one
day in the car singing college songs,--he did n't care how folks looked
if they had their tickets ready,--and minded their own business,--and, so
saying, he poked a young man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was
reclining with that delightful abandon which the railroad train seems to
provoke in lovely woman,--"Fare!"

It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, overcrowded hotel, where
they do not know you, looking dusty, and for the moment shabby, with
nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, feeling tired, and anything but