hat direction she had
gone, it was impossible for me to tell. The buggy was a wreck. No one
was in sight who seemed to have interest or anxiety in the matter. I
wondered that I did not find myself the victim of a gaping crowd. But
I reflected that the mishap had taken place in a quiet dwelling street,
not travelled at that hour, and that my fate, therefore, had attracted
no attention. I remembered, too, my patient, Mrs. Faith, and her boy,
and that dolt of a Henry's helpless face--the whole thing came to mind,
vividly. It occurred to me that the crowd might be at the scene of an
accident so terrible that no loafer was left to regard my lesser
misfortune. It was they who had been sacrificed. It was I who escaped.

My first thought was to go at once and learn the worst; but I found
myself a little out of my way. I really did not recognize the street
in which I stood. I had been for so many years accustomed to driving
everywhere that, like other doctors, I hardly knew how to walk; and by
the time I made my way back to the great thoroughfare where I had
collided with Mrs. Faith's carriage, no trace of the tragedy was to be
found; or at least I could not find any. After looking in vain, for a
while, I stopped a man, and asked him if there had not been a carriage
accident there within half an hour. He lifted his eyes to me stupidly,
and went on. I put the same question to some one else--a lazy fellow,
who was leaning against an iron railing and staring at me. But he
shook his head decidedly.

A young priest passed by, at this moment, saying an Ave with moving
lips and unworldly eyes, and I made inquiries of him whether a lady and
a child had just been injured in that vicinity by a runaway.

"Nay," he said, gazing at me with a luminous look. "Nay, I see
nothing."

After an instant's hesitation the priest made the sign of the cross
both upon himself and me; and then stretched his hands in blessing over
me, and silently went his way. I thought this very kind in him; and I
bowed, as we parted, saying aloud:--

"Thank you, Father," for my heart was touched, despite myself, at the
manner of the young devotee.

It had surely been my intention, on failing to find any traces of the
accident in the spot where I supposed that it had taken place, to go at
once to the house of Mrs. Faith, and inquire for her welfare and the
boy's. It was the least I could do, under the circumstances.

Apparently, however, I myself