After that he had nearly forgotten her in his absorbing efforts to keep the right side of his uncle, and entertain Amy.  And now she was here, and Jack was proposing to have him take her to Widow Biggs’s, which was a quarter of a mile beyond the park gates, Sam said, when consulted as to the widow’s whereabouts.  There was no help for it, but he didn’t like it, and there was a scowl on his face as he waited for Jack, who came at last with Eloise and the agent, whose lantern shed a dim light on the handsomely-cushioned carriage when the door was open.

“I’m not fit to get in there, I am so wet,” Eloise said, drawing back a little.

“As fit as we are,” Jack replied, almost lifting her in, and tilting his umbrella till one of the sticks struck Howard in the eye, increasing his discomposure, and making him wish both Eloise and Mrs. Biggs in a much dryer place than he was.

“Now, Howard, in with you.  There’s a little lull in the rain.  We’ll take advantage of it,” Jack continued, as he followed Howard into the carriage, where both sat down opposite Eloise, who crouched in her corner, afraid she did not know of what.  Certainly not of the man who had been so kind to her, and who she wished was sitting in front of her, instead of the one who did not speak at all, except to ask Sam how the deuce they were to know when they reached the Widow Biggs’s.

“Easy enough.  It is a squat-roofed house with lalock and piney bushes in the yard.”

“Yes, but how are we to see a squat roof with lalocks and pineys on this beastly night?” Howard rejoined, in a tone which told that he was not anticipating his trip to the widder Biggs’s.  “Drive on, for heaven’s sake,” he continued, “and don’t upset us.  It is darker than a pocket.”

“No, sir, not if I can help it.  I never knew the horses so ’fraid.  Easy, Cass—­easy Brute,” Sam answered, as in response to a flash of lightning Brutus and Cassius both stood on their hind feet and pawed the air with terror.  “Easy, easy, boys.  Lightnin’ can’t strike you but once,” Sam continued soothingly to the restless, nervous horses, who were at last gotten safely from the station, and started down the road which lead through the village to Crompton Place.

CHAPTER IV

THE ACCIDENT

For a short time the carriage went on smoothly and swiftly through the town, where the street lamps of kerosene gave a little light to the darkness.  Once out of town in the country Sam became less sure of his way, and as he could not see his hand before him, he finally left the matter to the horses, trusting their instinct to keep in the road.

“I shall know when I reach the gate, and so will Brute and Cass; but we’ve got to go farther to the Widder Biggs’s, and darned if I b’lieve they’ll know the place,” he thought, with a growing conviction of his inability to recognize Mrs. Biggs’s squat roof and lilacs and peonies.