“Are there any others?”

“Yes; two—­across the track.”

Mark and Saunders hastened to the other side.  Two women were bending over the forms laid on the ground.  One glance was enough.  The whole world seemed to spin around Mark Griffin.  Ruth and Madame Neuville were lying there—­both dead.

The strange women who were standing around seemed to understand.  They stepped back.  Mark knelt beside the girl’s body.  He could not see through his tears—­but they helped him.  He tried to pray, but found that he could only weep.  It seemed as though there were a flood within pushing to find exit and bring comfort to him.  He could think of her now in but one setting—­a great empty church at the end of springtime, crowds passing outside, a desolate man behind a closed door, and a little child, with the face of an angel, sitting alone in a carven pew.  He could hear her answer him in her childish prattle, could feel her cool little hand slip into his as she asked about the lonely man within.  Then he remembered the kiss.  The floods dried up.  Mark’s sorrow was beyond the consolation of tears.

Saunders aroused him.

“Be careful, Griffin.  The Padre will come.  Don’t let him see her yet.  He was hurt, you know, and he couldn’t stand it.”

Slowly Mark arose.  He couldn’t look at her again.  Saunders said something to the women, and they covered both bodies with blankets from the wrecked car, just as the priest came up.

“Are there others?” the priest asked.

Saunders looked at Mark as if begging him to be silent.

“No, Father, no others.”

“But these—­” he pointed to the blanket-covered bodies.

“They are—­already dead, Father.”

“God rest them.  I can do no more.”

The priest turned to cross the track, and almost fell.  Mark sprang to support him.  The relief train came in and another priest alighted, with a Protestant clergyman, and the surgeons and nurses.

“It’s all right, Father,” said Father Murray to his confrere.  “I found them all and gave absolution.  I’m afraid that I am tired.  There are many of your people, too,” he said, turning to the Protestant clergyman.  “I wish I were able to go back and show—­”

He was tired.  They carried him into the relief train, unconscious.  The young priest and the Protestant clergyman came frequently to look at him as the train sped on toward Baltimore.  But there was no cause for alarm; Father Murray was only overcome by his efforts and the blow.  In half an hour he was helping again, Mark and Saunders watching closely, in fear that he might lift the blanket that covered the face of Ruth Atheson.

When Father Murray came to where she had been placed in the train, Mark put his hand on the priest’s arm.

“Don’t, please, Father.  She is dead—­one of the two you saw lying on the other side when you came over.”