The Wrong Woman by Charles D Stewart

prepared
breakfast; and as he still continued to be absent, she sat down and ate alone.
Then she put up a lunch and stowed it in the pocket of her slicker. Its weight
had diminished considerably from what it was the day before, and as it did not
now have to be done up in the form of a bundle it could be carried in a more
convenient way. She folded the slicker lengthwise and threw it across her
shoulder.
    He had pointed out to her the direction in which the road lay at its nearest
point. She walked up and down restlessly. After much indecision and aimless
casting about, she turned suddenly toward her own quarter of the horizon and set
forth on her journey. But having proceeded a fair distance she slackened her
pace and came to a stop; and again she strolled up and down, looking
occasionally in the direction of the knoll. Finally, she returned to it and
resumed her meditations, less impatient.
    After a long time, or so it seemed to her, she looked up and saw him coming.
He carried a rope, the long noose of which he was making smaller to fit the coil
on his arm. As he reached the shack he threw down the coil and lifted his hat.
    "Good-morning, Miss Janet"he used the Southern form of address"are you all
ready to leave us?"
    "Yes; I thought I ought to get as early a start as possible. I made the
coffee right away. I did not know but you might be back in a little while."
    "Oh, I had breakfast long ago. I went out to see if I could get your horse
for you. But I did n't catch sight of him. I hunted for him longer than I
realized. It is quite a distance for you to walk, and I thought we might fix up
some way for you to ride."
    "That was very kind of you, Mr. Brown. I shall be quite able to walk. It was
only necessary for me to be shown the direction."
    "The road is over that way," he said, indicating its position with his arm.
"Keep in that direction a while and you will strike a wagon-trail. Then follow
that and it will bring you right out on the road. After you get to the road, you
will find a house about a mile to the right. That is, if you intend to go that
way."
    "I am from Merrill, Mr. Brown. I am on my way to the county-seat. For the
past week I have been teaching school a few miles from Merrill. It is the little
white schoolhouse near Crystal Spring."
    "A teacher!" he exclaimed.
    "I can hardly claim to be a teacher," she answered. "The girl who has that
school was called home by the death of her brother. I have only been
substituting. I am on my way to Belleview to take a teacher's examination."
    As Janet offered this conscientious information, Steve Brown looked in vain
for any allusion to her secretiveness of the night before. In her bearing there
was not the least vestige of arts and airs, nor any little intimation of mutual
understanding; she simply looked up with wide-open eyes and told it to him. This
honesty, quite as if she owed it, gave Steve a new experience in life; and he
gazed into eyes that charmed him by the clarity of their look.
    "You are going to the court-house to get a certificate!" he remarked.
    "I do not belong here in Texas," she said, continuing her story. "I am from
Ohio. I am stopping with the Dwights, down at Merrill. But for the past week I
have been stopping at a farmer's in order to be nearer the school."
    "Will you be going back to Ohio, possibly?"
    "It might be that I shall go back. But it all depends. I may get a school if
I pass."
    She stepped forward to take leave of him. But just at that moment he thrust
both hands deep into his pockets and bent his gaze intently upon the ground, his
brows knit together. She waited.
    "Miss Janet," he said, looking up suddenly, "I would be interested in knowing
whether you pass."
    "Well," she said, "I suppose I might easily let you know."
    "My address is Thornton, Box 20. I get my mail every dayexcepting the last
few days, of course;but I will get it again promptly as soon as I am out of
this fix I am in. I don't