When the train was ready he found a seat in the cars and waited impatiently for them to start.  For some reason they were late in getting away, but, once started, they seemed to be going fast enough to make up for lost time.

In the seats behind Ralph was a merry party of young girls.  Their incessant chatter and musical laughter came to his ears as from a long distance.  At any former time he would have listened to them with great pleasure; such sounds had an unspeakable charm for him; but to-day his brain was busied with weightier matters.

He looked from the car window and saw the river glancing in the sunlight, winding under shaded banks, rippling over stony bottoms.  He saw the wooded hill-sides, with the delicate green of spring upon them fast deepening into the darker tints of summer.  He saw the giant breakers looming up, black and massive, in the foreground of almost every scene.  And yet it was all scarcely more to him than a shadowy dream.  The strong reality in his mind was the trying task that lay before him yet, and the bitter outcome, so soon to be, of all his hopes and fancies.

At Pittston Junction there was another long delay.  Ralph grew very nervous and impatient.

If the train could have reached Wilkesbarre on time he would have had only an hour to spare before the sitting of the court.  Now he could hope for only a half-hour at the best.  And if anything should happen to deprive him of that time; if anything should happen so that he should not get to court until after the case was closed, until after the verdict of the jury had been rendered, until after the law had declared him to be Robert Burnham’s son; if anything should happen!  His face flushed, his heart began to beat wildly, his breath came in gasps.  If such a thing were to occur, without his fault, against his will and effort, what then?  It was only for a moment that he gave way to this insidious and undermining thought.  Then he fought it back, crushed it, trampled on it, and set his face again sternly to the front.

At last the train came, the impatient passengers entered it, and they were once more on their way.

It was a relief at least to be going, and for the moment Ralph had a faint sense of enjoyment in looking out across the placid bosom of the Susquehanna, over into the tree-girt, garden-decked expanse of the valley of Wyoming.  Off the nearer shore of a green-walled island in the river, a group of cattle stood knee-deep in the shaded water, a picture of perfect comfort and content.

Then the train swept around a curve, away from the shore, and back among the low hills to the east.  Suddenly there was a bumping together of the cars, an apparently powerful effort to check their impetus, a grinding of the brakes on the wheels, a rapid slowing of the train, and a slight shock at stopping.

The party of girls had grown silent, and their eyes were wide and their faces blanched with fear.