pant was the wife
of the Chief Engineer; his body had not yet been found. The widows of
the lost workmen, moving up and down the bank with shawls over their
heads, some of them carrying babies, looked at the rusty hired hack many
times that morning. They drew near it and walked about it, but none of
them ventured to peer within. Even half-indifferent sightseers dropped
their voices as they told a newcomer: "You see that carriage over there?
That's Mrs. Alexander. They haven't found him yet. She got off the train
this morning. Horton met her. She heard it in Boston yesterday--heard
the newsboys crying it in the street."

At noon Philip Horton made his way through the crowd with a tray and a
tin coffee-pot from the camp kitchen. When he reached the carriage
he found Mrs. Alexander just as he had left her in the early morning,
leaning forward a little, with her hand on the lowered window, looking
at the river. Hour after hour she had been watching the water, the
lonely, useless stone towers, and the convulsed mass of iron wreckage
over which the angry river continually spat up its yellow foam.

"Those poor women out there, do they blame him very much?" she asked, as
she handed the coffee-cup back to Horton.

"Nobody blames him, Mrs. Alexander. If any one is to blame, I'm afraid
it's I. I should have stopped work before he came. He said so as soon as
I met him. I tried to get him here a day earlier, but my telegram missed
him, somehow. He didn't have time really to explain to me. If he'd got
here Monday, he'd have had all the men off at once. But, you see, Mrs.
Alexander, such a thing never happened before. According to all human
calculations, it simply couldn't happen."

Horton leaned wearily against the front wheel of the cab. He had not had
his clothes off for thirty hours, and the stimulus of violent excitement
was beginning to wear off.

"Don't be afraid to tell me the worst, Mr. Horton. Don't leave me to the
dread of finding out things that people may be saying. If he is blamed,
if he needs any one to speak for him,"--for the first time her voice
broke and a flush of life, tearful, painful, and confused, swept over
her rigid pallor,--"if he needs any one, tell me, show me what to do."
She began to sob, and Horton hurried away.

When he came back at four o'clock in the afternoon he was carrying his
hat in his hand, and Winifred knew as soon as she saw him that they had
found Bartley. She opened the carriage door