estination."

"When was it?" in a tremulous tone.

"Two days ago; well, it will be three tonight. It was hardly midnight
when it happened. I never was in an accident before. It was awful."

Emma Boyd sat up in the bed and took the child in her arms, studying it
earnestly. Oh, how sweet and rosy it was with its dimpled mouth and its
fringe of soft hair. Then she laid it down and crept out of bed, feeling
rather shaky, but having the use of all her limbs. There was the dress
hanging on her chair. She wondered what would be done. Should she go on?

There was another pocket in the side of her skirt and she felt for
that. There was the remainder of her trip ticket and some money. She had
only put a small amount in her satchel and that was safe as well.
Rescuers had been honest. Was it a token that she should go on?

The official was in that afternoon and made her a general allowance, she
thought, for her losses. There would be a through train at nine the next
morning if she was able to go.

"Could I see the--the other lady. How was the baby hurt?"

"Oh, it was all crushed. The mother was killed. One of the passengers
recognized her and the lady, and though you were stunned for a long
while you came partly to, and called for your baby. So we brought it,
and although you were not quite rational you were so happy with it and
improved rapidly. You've been fortunate, ma'am."

"Yes," with a queer, frightened sound.

"She's a beautiful woman and belongs to the quality, but her hip is
broken and her back twisted, and there's something hurt in her head. She
can't live--we thought her dead in the night. It's a blessing the poor
baby has gone."

She lay like marble. A beautiful woman, truly. The eyelids with their
long lashes looked as if they were carven. There was only an infrequent
sign of respiration.

"We hope we are on the track of some one belonging to her. The doctors
want her moved to the hospital."

The next morning Emma Boyd journeyed out to her brother's. A coarse,
common, loud voiced farmer, rough and unkempt and five unruly children.
She was appalled, and a dreary stretch of prairie land with hardly a
neighbor in sight. Why she had been crazy to come! and she found farm
work quite too hard for her. She had better be housemaid at Laconia, or
go in the mills again. And when her brother found she had a little money
he was eager to get hold of it. Yes, she had better return to her native
town, especially as her