e same morning, when Cyrus and Peggy
had gone, I was sitting on the piazza making a little money-bag for her,
with mother sitting rocking beside me, and complaining of every one in
peace, when Dr. Denbigh drove up to the horse-block, flung his weight
out of the buggy, and hurried up the steps. He shook hands with us
hastily and abstractedly, and asked if he might speak to me inside the
house.

"Mrs. Talbert," he said, closing the door of the library as soon as we
were inside it, "I am sure you will try not to feel alarmed at something
I must tell you of at once. The early morning train I came on from New
York, the one that ought to get in at Eastridge at eleven, was derailed
two hours ago on a misplaced switch between here and Whitman. No one
was killed, but many of the passengers were injured. Among the injured
I took care of was Mr. Goward. His arm has been broken. He's been badly
shaken up--and he's now in a state of shock at the Whitman Hospital.
The boy has been asking for Peggy, and then for you. I promised him that
after my work was done--all the injured were taken there by a special as
soon as possible after the wreck--I'd ask you to drive back to see him.
Will you come?"

Of course I went, then. And at Harry Goward's request I have gone twice
since. He is very ill, too ill to talk, and though Dr. Denbigh says
he will outlive a thousand stronger men, he has been rather worse this
morning. When I first saw him he asked for Peggy in one gasping word,
and when he learned she had gone to Washington turned even whiter than
he had been before. He is nervously quite wrecked and wretched; has no
confidence in Dr. Denbigh; and either Maria or I will go to the hospital
every day till the boy's mother comes from California. It is a very
trying situation. For his misfortune has, of course, not changed my
knowledge of his nature. I dread telling Cyrus and Peggy, when I
meet their returning noon train, after I have left mother at home, of
everything that has happened here.

As though these difficulties were not enough, this morning, just before
we started to Whitman, we were involved in another perplexity through
the unwilling agency of Mr. Temple. He called me up to read me a
bewildering telegram he had received an hour before from Elizabeth. It
said:

"Please end Eastridge scandal by announcing my engagement in
Banner.--Lily."

"Engagement to whom?" Mr. Temple had asked by telephone of Charles, who
said none of us co