mpending
calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have
averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking
out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some
possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of
the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the
white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the
minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half
three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour
past seven, and nobody had come.

'I shall have to tell Arthur,' he thought, and, with something like
hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.

Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly
across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door
and advanced a step or two across the threshold.

'Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?' Arthur cried,
springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his
brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.

'No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was nonsense to send
the horses out such a night as this,' Frank said, sternly, with a
mistaken notion that he must speak sharply to the unfortunate man, who,
if rightly managed, was gentle as a child.

'Not come! Gretchen not come! There must be some mistake!' Arthur said,
all the brightness fading from his face, which seemed to grow pinched
and pallid as he turned it piteously toward his brother and continued:
'Not come! Oh, Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go and
question him--there must be a mistake.'

He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his arm and detained
him, while he said, decidedly:

'No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you no one was
there--and I knew there would not be. It was folly to send.'

For a moment a pale, haggard face, which looked still more haggard and
pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted Frank steadily;
then the lips began to quiver, and the eyelids to twitch, while great
tears gathered in Arthur's eyes, until at last, covering his face with
his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself upon it,
sobbed convulsively.

'Oh, Gretchen, my darling!' he said. 'I was so sure, and now everything
is swept away, and I am left so desolate.'

Frank had never seen grief just like this, and,