That was the kind of nerve that blessed little Mother Marshall was built with, and it was only in such times as these, when Father had gone to town and stayed a little later than usual, that the tears in her heart got the better of her and she laid her face against the old felt hat.

Down the road in the gloom moved a dark speck.  It couldn’t be Father, for he had gone in the machine—­the nice, comfortable little car that Stephen had made them get before he went away to college, because he said that Father needed to have things easier now.  Father would be in the machine, and by this time the lights would be lit.  Father was very careful always about lighting up when it grew dusk.  He had a great horror of accidents to other people.  Not that he was afraid for himself, no indeed.  Father was a man!  The kind of a man to be the father of a Stephen!

The speck grew larger.  It made a chugging noise.  It was one of those horrible motor-cycles.  Mother Marshall hated them, though she had never revealed the fact.  Stephen had wanted one, had said he intended to get one with the first money he earned after he came out of college, but she had hoped in her heart they would go out of fashion by that time and there would be something less fiendish-looking to take their place.  They always looked to her as if they were headed straight for destruction, and the person on them seemed as if he were going to the devil and didn’t care.  She secretly hated the idea of Stephen ever sitting upon one of them, flying through space.  But now he was gone beyond all such fears.  He had wings, and there were no dangers where he was.  All danger and fear was over for him.  She had never wanted either of her men to know the inward quakings of her soul over each new risk as Stephen began to grow up.  She wanted to be worthy to be the mother and wife of noblemen, and fears were not for such; so she hid them and struggled against them in secret.

The motor-cycle came on like a comet now, and turned thundering in at the big gate.  A sudden alarm filled Mother Marshall’s soul.  Had something happened to Father?  That was the only terrible thing left in life to happen now.  An accident!  And this boy had come to prepare her for the worst?  She had the kitchen door wide open even before the boy had stopped his machine and set it on its mysterious feet.

“Sp’c’l d’liv’ry!” fizzed the boy, handing her a fat envelope, a book, and the stub of a pencil.  “Si’n’eer!” indicating a line on the book.

She managed to write her name in cramped characters, but her hand was trembling so she could hardly form the letters.  A wild idea that perhaps they had discovered somehow that Stephen had escaped death in some miraculous manner flitted through her brain and out again, controlled by her strong common sense.  Such notions always came to people after death had taken their loved ones—­frenzied hopes for miracles!  Stephen had been dead for four months now.  There could be no such possibility, of course.