This last sentence pierced me as if it had been a knife.

“He went out just now,” continued Mr. Carleton, “so much intoxicated that he walked straight only by an effort.”

“Why did you let him go?” I asked, fear laying suddenly its cold hand on my heart.  “What if harm should come to him?”

“The worst harm will be a night at the station house, should he happen to get into a drunken brawl on his way home,” my husband replied.

I shivered as I murmured, “His poor mother!”

“I thought of her,” replied Mr. Carleton, “as I saw him depart just now, and said to myself bitterly, ’To think of sending home from my house to his mother a son in that condition!’ And he was not the only one!”

We were silent after that.  Our hearts were so heavy that we could not talk.  It was near daylight before I slept, and then my dreams were of so wild and strange a character that slumber was brief and unrefreshing.

The light came dimly in through half-drawn curtains on the next morning when a servant knocked at my door.

“What is wanted?” I asked.

“Did Mr. Albert Martindale sleep here last night?”

I sprang from my bed, strangely agitated, and partly opening the chamber door, said, in a voice whose unsteadiness I could not control, “Why do you ask, Katy?  Who wants to know?”

“Mrs. Martindale has sent to inquire.  The girl says he didn’t come home last night.”

“Tell her that he left our house about two o’clock,” I replied; and shutting the chamber door, staggered back to the bed and fell across it, all my strength gone for the moment.

“Send her word to inquire at one of the police stations,” said my husband, bitterly.

I did not answer, but lay in a half stupor, under the influence of benumbing mental pain.  After a while I arose, and, looking out, saw everything clothed in a white mantle, and the snow falling in large flakes, heavily but silently, through the still air.  How the sight chilled me.  That the air was piercing cold, I knew by the delicate frost-pencilings all over the window panes.

After breakfast, I sent to Mrs. Martindale a note of inquiry about Albert.  A verbal answer came from the distracted mother, saying that he was still absent, and that inquiry of the police had failed to bring any intelligence in regard to him.  It was still hoped that he had gone home with some friend, and would return during the day.

Steadily the snow continued to fall, and as the wind had risen since morning, it drifted heavily.  By ten o’clock it was many inches deep, and there was no sign of abatement.  My suspense and fear were so oppressive that, in spite of the storm, I dressed myself and went out to call on my friend.  I found her in her chamber, looking very pale, and calmer than I had hoped to find her.  But the calmness I soon saw to be a congelation of feeling.  Fear of the worst had frozen the wild waves into stillness.