And suddenly—­it was nearly six o’clock now, and they were within a few minutes of Clark’s Hills—­she stopped crying, and began to plan a letter that should end the whole terrible episode.

“Your stop Quaker Bridge?” asked the conductor, coming in, and beginning to shift the seats briskly on their iron pivots, as one who expected a large crowd to accompany him on the run back.

“Clark’s Hills,” Rachael said, noticing that she was alone in the train.

“Don’t know as we can get over the Bar,” the man said cheerily.

“Looks as if we were going to try it!” Rachael answered with equal aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping, and went on with only slightly decreased speed.  And a moment later she began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor remarked amiably:  “Here we are!  But she surely is raining,” he added.  “Well, we’ve only got to run back as far as the car barn—­ that’s Seawall—­to-night.  My folks live there.”

Rachael did not mind the rain.  She would be at home in five minutes.  She climbed into a closed surrey, smelling strongly of leather and horses, and asked the driver pleasantly how early the rain had commenced.  He evidently did not hear her, at all events made no answer, and she did not speak again.

“Where’s my Derry?” Rachael’s voice rang strong and happy through the house.  “Mary—­Mary!” she added, stopping, rather puzzled, in the hall.  “Where is he?”

How did it come to her, by what degrees?  How does such news tell itself, from the first little chill, that is not quite fear, to the full thundering avalanche of utter horror?  Rachael never remembered afterward, never tried to remember.  The moment remained the blackest of all her life.  It was not the subtly changed atmosphere of the house, not Mary’s tear-swollen face, as she appeared, silent, at the top of the stairs; not Millie, who came ashen-faced and panting from the kitchen; not the sudden, weary little moan that floated softly through the hallway—­no one of all these things.

Yet Rachael knew—­Derry was dying.  She needed not to know how or why.  Her furs fell where she stood, her hat was gone, she had flown upstairs as swiftly as light.  She knew the door, she knew what she would see.  She went down on her knees beside him.

Her little gallant, reckless, shouting Derry!  Her warm, beautiful boy, changed in these few hours to this crushed and moaning little being, this cruelly crumpled and tortured little wreck of all that had been gay and sound and confident babyhood!

In that first moment at his side it had seemed to Rachael that she must die, too, of sheer agony of spirit.  She put her beautiful head down against the brown little limp hand upon which a rusty stain was drying, and she could have wailed aloud in the bitter rebellion of her soul.  Not Derry, not Derry, so small and innocent and confiding—­her own child, her own flesh and blood, the fibre of her being!  Trusting them, obeying them, and betrayed—­brought to this!