ou don't start."

"You'll have me home in a twinkling," he promised. And in a flash was
gone.

She turned and ran back, with head bent beneath the downpouring rain,
light-hearted, to her home, not knowing, never guessing that on that
handsome, smiling, healthy face of her young husband she had looked her
last.

For when, a couple of hours later, borne on men's shoulders, he was
carried to his home, he was so crushed and mangled out of his likeness
as his wife had known him that, even by force, they prevented her from
looking upon him.

When time had elapsed--Elinor, for some part of it mercifully numbed or
unconscious, could not have told if hours, days or weeks--Bob Anstey,
at her request, was brought to her. He had been in waiting, knowing
that, sooner or later, that meeting, if they did not die with the pain
of it, must be lived through.

He had expected to see her lying helpless and strengthless with hidden
face. She was standing up against the darkened windows at the end of
the long room furthest from the door. He started, walking slowly,
almost as if he was groping his way, among the familiar chairs and
tables, in her direction. But when half the space was traversed, and
she still stood there, uttering no word, dully watching him, his
courage failed, and he stopped short. It was the sight of Ted's chair,
his pipes on the bracket beside it, the picture of him, smiling, in the
silver frame on the mantelpiece, which unmanned him. He had prayed that
he might have strength to support the girl-widow in this interview; and
he found himself suddenly giving way before her, sobbing like a child;
while Elinor looked on tearlessly from afar, dangling the tassel of the
window-blind in her hand.

When at length he somewhat mastered his grief and looked up, she had
come quite close to him, but she did not speak.

"I thought you might like to hear," Anstey said, in sorrow-muffled
voice; and she nodded her head for him to go on.

"He--talked of you nearly all the way," he began. "He said how----"

She stopped him. "Not that," she said, "not yet. The other--the other!"

By some instinct he knew what she meant. "It was going down the
Wenderling Hill," he said, "just as we got into the town. You know that
steepish hill? Halfway down was a brewer's waggon. We were going at a
good stroke, not saying anything, for the moment. We got up to the
waggon. 'There's that infernal white dog again,' he said. And I heard
him call lou