down them again and out of the house, buttoning her coat as she went, and had vanished round the corner and down the road.  She felt absolutely no fear of meeting her teachers, for it never entered her head that she was doing anything wrong.  Miss Pidsley had once said that if she was wanted at home she could go, and Kitty had never, since then, felt herself a prisoner at school.  She did hope that she might not meet them, or any one else she knew, for time was very precious, and explanations would cause delay; but that they might forbid her to go never once entered her head.  Her mind was full of but one thought—­Betty was lost, and no one but herself had any clue as to her whereabouts.

But the only person that Kitty met was a telegraph boy.  Miss Pidsley and Miss Hammond, coming home by another route, met the telegraph boy too at the gate, and took the telegram from him.

“Oh,” exclaimed Miss Pidsley as she opened it and mastered its contents, “dear, dear!  This brings bad news for Katherine Trenire.  Listen,” and she read aloud, “Mrs. Pike seriously ill.  Send Miss Trenire at once.  Yearsley.”

“Shall I break it to the poor child?” asked Miss Hammond anxiously.

“Please.”

Miss Hammond hurried into the house and to the schoolroom, but Kitty was not there.  Then she went to the music-room, but there was no Kitty there; then by degrees they searched the whole house and garden, but in vain, and at last stood gazing at each other, perplexed and alarmed.  Kitty, with never a thought of all the trouble she was causing, had caught her train and was speeding home, little dreaming, though, of all that lay before her, for in her alarm for Betty she had quite failed to grasp the other and more serious news that Betty had written; and, as the long minutes dragged by, and the train seemed but to crawl, it was only for Betty that her anxiety increased, is her mind had time to dwell on what had happened, and picture all the dreadful things that might have occurred to her.

“It was a wet night, and it was a very dark one, and such strange sounds fill a wood at night, and—­oh, I hope she kept away from the river!  If anything chased her, and she ran, and in the darkness fell in—­ O Betty, Betty!”

Then “Gorlay at last!” she cried in intense relief as she recognized the well-known landmarks.  Long before the train could possibly draw up, she got up and stood by the door with the handle in her hand, a sense of strangeness, of unreality, growing upon her.  She felt as though she were some one else, some one older and more experienced, who was accustomed to moving amidst tragedies and the serious events of life.  Even the old familiar platform, the white palings, the ’bus and the drowsy horses that she knew so well, seemed to her to have changed too, and to wear quite a different aspect.

“I feel like a person just waking out of a dream, not knowing whether it is dream or reality,” she thought to herself as she opened the door and stepped out on to the platform.  “I suppose I am not dreaming?”