An hour after nightfall that evening the Eastern express-train reached the station beyond Berrytown, bringing home Peter and his wife, triumphant.  Her money had covered a larger extent of muslins and laces than she hoped for—­enough to convert the raw school-girl Kitty, when she was married, into a leader of church-going fashion.

Mrs. Guinness leaned back in the plush car-seat, planning the wedding-breakfast.  That was now her only care.  Out in the world of shops and milliners her superstitious dread of a man long since dead had seemed to her absurd.

“I have had some unreasonable fears about Kitty,” she said to Peter, who was beginning to nod opposite to her.  “But all will be well when she is Muller’s wife.”

Another train passed at the moment they reached the station.  Her eye ran curiously over the long line of faces in the car-windows to find some neighbor or friend.

She touched Peter’s arm:  “How like that is to Kitty!” nodding toward a woman’s head brought just opposite to them.  The train began to move, and the woman turned her face toward them:  “Merciful Heaven, it is Kitty!”

The engine sent out its shrill foreboding whistle and rushed on, carrying the girl into the darkness.  Behind her in the car as it passed her mother saw the face of Hugh Guinness.

CHAPTER XIV.

Doctor McCall had been five minutes too late for the first train, and so had been delayed for the express in which Kitty started on her adventure.  Commonplace accidents determine commonplace lives, was a favorite maxim of the Berrytown Illuminati.  The Supreme Intelligence whom they complimented with respect could not be expected to hold such petty trifles or petty lives in His controlling hand.

Doctor McCall had seen Catharine when she first entered the station.  Her very manner had the air of flight and secresy.  Puzzled and annoyed, he sat down in the rear of the car, himself unseen.  When they reached Philadelphia it was not yet dawn.  The passengers rushed out of the cars:  Kitty sat quiet.  She had never slept outside of the Book-house before.  She looked out at the dim-lighted depot, at the slouching dark figures that stole through it from time to time, the engines, with their hot red eyes, sweeping back and forward in the distance, breaking the night with portentous shrieks.  Where should she go?  She had never been in a hotel in her life:  she had no money.  If she ventured into the night she would be arrested, no doubt, as a vagrant.  She had a gallant heart to take care of Hugh Guinness’s life, but her poor little woman’s body was quaking in deadly fear for herself.  In a moment a decent mulatto woman, whom McCall had sent, came from the waiting-room into the deserted car.

“There is a room for ladies, where you can be comfortable until daybreak, madam,” she said respectfully.

“I am much obliged to you,” said Catharine.