Sarah Shepard had always attended to the buying of his clothes, and he made
up his mind that he would go to the place in Michigan to which she and her
husband had retired, and pay her a visit. He wanted Sarah Shepard to buy
him a new outfit of clothes, but wanted also to talk with her.

Out of the three years of going from place to place and working with other
men as a laborer, Hugh had got no big impulse that he felt would mark the
road his life should take; but the study of mathematical problems, taken
up to relieve his loneliness and to cure his inclination to dreams, was
beginning to have an effect on his character. He thought that if he saw
Sarah Shepard again he could talk to her and through her get into the
way of talking to others. In the sawmill where he worked he answered the
occasional remarks made to him by his fellow workers in a slow, hesitating
drawl, and his body was still awkward and his gait shambling, but he did
his work more quickly and accurately. In the presence of his foster-mother
and garbed in new clothes, he believed he could now talk to her in a way
that had been impossible during his youth. She would see the change in his
character and would be encouraged about him. They would get on to a new
basis and he would feel respect for himself in another.

Hugh went to the railroad station to make inquiry regarding the fare to the
Michigan town and there had the adventure that upset his plans. As he stood
at the window of the ticket office, the ticket seller, who was also the
telegraph operator, tried to engage him in conversation. When he had given
the information asked, he followed Hugh out of the building and into the
darkness of a country railroad station at night, and the two men stopped
and stood together beside an empty baggage truck. The ticket agent spoke of
the loneliness of life in the town and said he wished he could go back to
his own place and be again with his own people. "It may not be any better
in my own town, but I know everybody there," he said. He was curious