Lloyd’s hat blew off.  Her face turned white with a sickening dread, and her breath began to come in frightened sobs.  On and on they went, and, as the scenes of a lifetime will be crowded into a moment in the memory of a drowning man, so a thousand things came flashing into Lloyd’s mind.  She saw the locust avenue all white and sweet in blossom time, and thought, with a strange thrill of self-pity, that she would never ride under its white arch again.  Then she saw Betty’s face on the pillow, as she had lain with bandaged eyes, telling in her tremulous little voice the story of the Road of the Loving Heart.  Queerly enough, with that came the thought of Howl and Henny, and she had time to be glad that she had amused them on the voyage, and made them happy.  Then came her mother’s face, and Papa Jack’s.  In a few moments, she told herself, they would be picking up her poor, broken, lifeless little body from the street.  How horribly they would feel.  And then—­she screamed and shut her eyes.  The carriage had dashed into something that tore off a wheel.  There was a crash—­a sound as of splintering wood.  But it did not stop their mad flight.  With a horrible bumping motion that nearly threw her from the carriage at every jolt, they still kept on.

They were on the quay now.  The noon sun on the water flashed into her eyes like the blinding light thrown back from a looking-glass.  Then something white and yellow darted from the crowd on the pavement, and catching the horse by the bit, swung on heavily.  The horse dragged along for a few paces, and came to a halt, trembling like a leaf.

A wild hurrah went up from both sides of the street, and the Little Colonel, as she was lifted out white and trembling, saw that it was a huge St. Bernard that the crowd was cheering.

“Oh, it’s H-Hero!” she cried, with chattering teeth.  “How did he get here?” But no one understood her question.  The faces she looked into, while beaming with friendly interest, were all foreign.  The eager exclamations on all sides were uttered in a foreign tongue.  There was no one to take her home, and in her fright she could not remember the name of their hotel.  But in the midst of her confusion a hearty sentence in English sounded in her ear, and a strong arm caught her up in a fatherly embrace.  It was the Major who came pushing through the crowd to reach her.  Her grandfather himself could not have been more welcome just at that time, and her tears came fast when she found herself in his friendly shelter.  The shock had been a terrible one.

“Come, dear child!” he exclaimed, gently, patting her shoulder.  “Courage!  We are almost at the hotel.  See, it is on the corner, there.  The father and mother will soon be here.”