CHAPTER I.

      OUTSIDE QUARANTINE

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      The gray horse stopped by a post on the other side of the road from the little wooden station as if he knew what was expected of him, and a young girl got out of the carriage and fastened him with a strap. The horse bowed his head two or three times as if to let her know the hitching was unnecessary but he would overlook it this time seeing it was she who had done it.

      The girl's fingers did their work with accustomed skill, but the horse saw that she was preoccupied and she turned from him toward the station a trifle reluctantly. There was a grave pucker between her eyebrows that showed that her present duty was not one of choice.

      She walked deliberately into the little waiting room occupied by some women and noisy children, and compared her watch with the grim-faced clock behind the agent's grating. She asked in a clear voice if the five-fifty-five New York train was on time, and being assured that it was she went out to the platform to look up the long stretch of track gleaming in the late afternoon sun, and wait.

      Five miles away, speeding toward the same station, another girl of about the same age sat in a chair car, impatiently watching the houses, trees, and telegraph poles as they flew by. She had gathered her possessions about her preparatory to leaving the train, had been duly brushed by the obsequious porter who seemed to have her in charge, and she now wore an air of impatient submission to the inevitable.

      She was unmistakably city bred and wealthy, from the crown of her elaborate black chiffon hat to the tip of her elegant boot. She looked with scorn on the rich farming country, with its plain, useful buildings and occasional pretty homes, through which she was being carried. It was evident, even to the casual onlooker, that this journey she was taking was hardly to her taste. She felt a wave of rebellion toward her father, now well on his way to another continent, for having insisted upon immuring her in a small back-country village with his maiden sister during his enforced absence. He might well enough have left her in New York with a suitable chaperon if he had only thought so, or taken her along—though that would have been a bore, as he was too hurried with business to be able to give time and thought to making it pleasant for her.

      She drew her pretty forehead into a frown as she thought the vexed question over again and contemplated