After writing to Andrew I thought I would send a message to the Professor.  I had already written him a long letter in my mind, but somehow when I began putting it on paper a sort of awkwardness came over me.  I didn’t know just how to begin.  I thought how much more fun it would be if he were there himself and I could listen to him talk.  And then, while I was writing the first few sentences, some of the drummers came back into the room.

“Thought you’d like to see a Sunday paper,” said one of them.

I picked up the newspaper with a word of thanks and ran an eye over the headlines.  The ugly black letters stood up before me, and my heart gave a great contraction.  I felt my fingertips turn cold.

DISASTROUS WRECK ON THE SHORE LINE EXPRESS RUNS INTO OPEN SWITCH —­ TEN LIVES LOST, AND MORE THAN A SCORE INJURED —­ FAILURE OF BLOCK SIGNALS

The letters seemed to stand up before me as large as a Malted Milk signboard.  With a shuddering apprehension I read the details.  Apparently the express that left Providence at four o’clock on Saturday afternoon had crashed into an open siding near Willdon about six o’clock, and collided with a string of freight empties.  The baggage car had been demolished and the smoker had turned over and gone down an embankment.  There were ten men killed... my head swam.  Was that the train the Professor had taken?  Let me see.  He left Woodbridge on a local train at three.  He had said the day before that the express left Port Vigor at five....  If he had changed to the express.....

In a kind of fascinated horror my eye caught the list of the dead.  I ran down the names.  Thank God, no, Mifflin was not among them.  Then I saw the last entry: 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN, MIDDLE-AGED.

What if that should be the Professor?

And I suddenly felt dizzy, and for the first time in my life I fainted.

Thank goodness, no one else was in the room.  The drummers had gone outside again, and no one heard me flop off the chair.  I came to in a moment, my heart whirling like a spinning top.  At first I did not realize what was wrong.  Then my eye fell on the newspaper again.  Feverishly I re-read the account, and the names of the injured, too, which I had missed before.  Nowhere was there a name I knew.  But the tragic words “unidentified man” danced before my eyes.  Oh! if it were the Professor....

In a wave the truth burst upon me.  I loved that little man:  I loved him, I loved him.  He had brought something new into my life, and his brave, quaint ways had warmed my fat old heart.  For the first time, in an intolerable gush of pain, I seemed to know that my life could never again be endurable without him.  And now—­what was I to do?

How could I learn the truth?  Certainly if he had been on the train, and had escaped from the wreck unhurt, he would have sent a message to Sabine Farm to let me know.  At any rate, that was a possibility.  I rushed to the telephone to call up Andrew.