Page:Poor White.djvu/75

 night train that would carry the letter away and that would, he felt, carry also his demand that a fellow- human, who had slipped from the modern path of work and progress should be giv,en a new chance. He felt magnanimous and wonderfully gracious. " It's all right, my boy," he said heartily. " No use talking to me. To-night when you came to the station to ask the fare to that hole of a place in Michigan I saw you were embarrassed. ' What's the matter with that fellow? ' I said to myself. I got to thinking. Then I came up town with you and right away you bought me a drink. I wouldn't have thought anything about that if I hadn't been there myself. You'll get on your feet. Bidwell, Ohio, is full of good men. You get in with them and they'll help you and stick by you. You'll like those people. They've got get-up to them. The place you'll work at there is far out of town. It's away out about a mile at a little kind of outside-like place called Pickleville. There used to be a saloon there and a factory for putting up cucumber pickles, but they've both gone now. You won't be tempted to slip in that place. You'll have a chance to get on your feet. I'm glad I thought of sending you there." The Wheeling and Lake Erie ran along a little wooded depression that cut across the wide expanse of open farm lands north of the town of Bidwell. It brought coal from the hill country of West Virginia and southeastern Ohio to ports on Lake Erie, and did not pay much attention to the carrying -of passengers. In the morning a train consisting of a combined ex- press and baggage car and two passenger coaches went north and west toward the lake, and in the evening the