Page:A strange, sad comedy (IA strangesadcomedy00seawiala).pdf/209

Rh amount of freight, and in five minutes the boat had lurched off, and the noise of her churning wheels and the myriad lights from her saloons were melting in the blackness where the river and night sky blent together.

The stranger looked around her with calm self-possession, and seemed surprised at the loneliness of the landscape and the deserted look of things around the little waiting-room and freight-house at the end of the wharf. Colonel Corbin, imagining her the unexpectedly arrived guest of some one in the county, advanced with a profound bow, and taking off his hat in the cutting blast, said:

"Madam, permit me to say that you seem to be a stranger and to have no one to meet you. I am Colonel Corbin, and I should esteem it a privilege to be of assistance to you."

"Thank you," she answered, turning to him and speaking with a very French accent, "I did not expect any one to meet me, but I thought there would be a town—or a village at least, when I left the steamer. I am foreign to this country—I am French, but I am accustomed to traveling."

"Every word that you say, madam, is