“Where be ye goin’?” she asked pleasantly; and they told her.  It was to the town where she had to change cars and take the great through train; a point of geography which she had learned from evening talks between the men at the farm.

“What’ll ye carry me there for?”

“We don’t run no passenger cars,” said one of the young fellows, laughing.  “What makes you in such a hurry?”

“I’m startin’ for Pheladelphy, an’ it’s a gre’t ways to go.”

“So’t is; but you’re consid’able early, if you’re makin’ for the eight-forty train.  See here! you haven’t got a needle an’ thread ’long of you in that bundle, have you?  If you’ll sew me on a couple o’ buttons, I’ll give ye a free ride.  I’m in a sight o’ distress, an’ none o’ the fellows is provided with as much as a bent pin.”

“You poor boy!  I’ll have you seen to, in half a minute.  I’m troubled with a stiff arm, but I’ll do the best I can.”

The obliging Betsey seated herself stiffly on the slope of the embankment, and found her thread and needle with utmost haste.  Two of the train-men stood by and watched the careful stitches, and even offered her a place as spare brakeman, so that they might keep her near; and Betsey took the offer with considerable seriousness, only thinking it necessary to assure them that she was getting most too old to be out in all weathers.  An express went by like an earthquake, and she was presently hoisted on board an empty box-car by two of her new and flattering acquaintances, and found herself before noon at the end of the first stage of her journey, without having spent a cent, and furnished with any amount of thrifty advice.  One of the young men, being compassionate of her unprotected state as a traveler, advised her to find out the widow of an uncle of his in Philadelphia, saying despairingly that he couldn’t tell her just how to find the house; but Miss Betsey Lane said that she had an English tongue in her head, and should be sure to find whatever she was looking for.  This unexpected incident of the freight train was the reason why everybody about the South Byfleet station insisted that no such person had taken passage by the regular train that same morning, and why there were those who persuaded themselves that Miss Betsey Lane was probably lying at the bottom of the poor-farm pond.

VII.

“Land sakes!” said Miss Betsey Lane, as she watched a Turkish person parading by in his red fez, “I call the Centennial somethin’ like the day o’ judgment!  I wish I was goin’ to stop a month, but I dare say ‘twould be the death o’ my poor old bones.”