got no big impulse that he felt would mark the road his life should take; but the study of mathematical prob- lems, 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 ac- curately. 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 an- other. 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 con- versation. When he had given the information asked, he followed Hugh out of the building and into the dark- ness of a country railroad station at night, and the two men stopped and stood together beside an empty bag- gage 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 concern- ing Hugh as were all the people of the Indiana town,
