She paused for a moment as if about to ask a question.  She put a thin hand on the cover of a sugar-barrel, and looked at him timidly from the depths of her bonnet as he came out of the pen, but she said nothing.  As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward.  But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road over which she had come.

“Don’t seem to know exactly whar she does want to go,” remarked Jim Hunter, breaking the silence which had followed her departure from the store.  “Who is she, anyway?”

“Oz Fergerson’s daughter Hettie,” replied Worthy, leaning against the door-jamb.  “She don’t look overly well; I reckon that’s why she quit workin’ at the hotel.  She’s dyin’ to git a letter from some’rs; she comes reg’lar every day an’ goes away powerfully disappointed.”

“Never seed her before as I know of,” said Longfield, handing Worthy his basket of eggs.

The girl suddenly turned down the sidewalk.  She passed Mrs. Webb’s cottage and the bar and went into the hotel.  Mrs. Floyd met her at the door.

“Mis’ Floyd, I want to see Harriet,” she said.

“She’s up-stairs,” replied Mrs. Floyd.  “I’ll call her; but you’d better go in to the fire.”

The girl shook her head and muttered something Mrs. Floyd could not understand, so she left her in the hall.

Mrs. Floyd found Harriet in her room.  “Hettie Fergerson is down-stairs and wants to see you,” she said.  “She still acts very strange.  I asked her to go into the parlor, but she wouldn’t.”

“How do you do, Hettie?” said Harriet, as she came down the steps.  “Come into the parlor; you look cold.”

The girl hesitated, but finally followed Harriet into the warm room.  They sat down before the fire, and there was an awkward silence for several minutes, then the visitor suddenly pushed back her bonnet and said, in a hard, desperate tone: 

“Where is Toot Wambush, Harriet?”

Harriet looked at her in surprise for an instant, then she answered: 

“Why, Hettie, how could I know?  Nobody in Cartwright does now, I reckon.”

“I thought you might.”  Both girls were silent for a moment, then the visitor looked apprehensively over her shoulder at the door.  “Is yore ma coming in here?”

“No; she’s busy in the kitchen; do you want to see her?”

“No.”  The girl spoke quickly and moved uneasily.

“You came to see me?”

“I come to see somebody—­oh, Harriet, I’m so miserable!  You didn’t suspicion it, Harriet, but I’m afraid that man has made a plumb fool of me.  I haven’t slept hardly one wink since they driv’ ’im off.  I—­” She put her hand to her eyes, and as she paused Harriet thought she was crying, but a moment later, when she removed her hand, her eyes were dry.