of paper propped on his bony knees and did sums. Farmers driving past on
Turner's Pike saw him there and talked of him in the stores in town. "He's
a queer silent fellow," they said. "What do you suppose he's up to?"

Hugh walked in the streets of Bidwell at night as he had walked in the
streets of towns in Indiana and Illinois. He approached groups of men
loafing on a street corner and then went hurriedly past them. On quiet
streets as he went along under the trees, he saw women sitting in the
lamplight in the houses and hungered to have a house and a woman of his
own. One afternoon a woman school teacher came to the station to make
inquiry regarding the fare to a town in West Virginia. As the station agent
was not about Hugh gave her the information she sought and she lingered for
a few moments to talk with him. He answered the questions she asked with
monosyllables and she soon went away, but he was delighted and looked upon
the incident as an adventure. At night he dreamed of the school teacher and
when he awoke, pretended she was with him in his bedroom. He put out his
hand and touched the pillow. It was soft and smooth as he imagined the
cheek of a woman would be. He did not know the school teacher's name but
invented one for her. "Be quiet, Elizabeth. Do not let me disturb your
sleep," he murmured into the darkness. One evening he went to the house
where the school teacher boarded and stood in the shadow of a tree until he
saw her come out and go toward Main Street. Then he went by a roundabout
way and walked past her on the sidewalk before the lighted stores. He did
not look at her, but in passing her dress touched his arm and he was so
excited later that he could not sleep and spent half the night walking
about and thinking of the wonderful thing that had happened to him.

The ticket, express, and freight agent for the Wheeling and Lake Erie at
Bidwell, a man named George Pike, lived in one of the houses near the
station, and besides attending to his duties for the railroad company,