A Modern Instance eBook

Halleck set himself against this delirious folly:  he consented to her return; she could do what she would; but he would not consent to cheat her father.  “We must go and tell him,” he said, for all answer to all her entreaties.  He dragged her back to the waiting-room; but at the door she started at the figure of a man who was bending over a group of emigrant children asleep in the nearest corner,—­poor, uncouth, stubbed little creatures, in old-mannish clothes, looking like children roughly blocked out of wood, and stiffly stretched on the floor, or resting woodenly against their mother.

“There!” said the man, pressing a mug of coffee on the woman.  “You drink that!  It’ll do you good,—­every drop of it!  I’ve seen the time,” he said, turning round with the mug, when she had drained it, in his hand, and addressing Marcia and Halleck as the most accessible portion of the English-speaking public, “when I used to be down on coffee; I thought it was bad for the nerves; but I tell you, when you’re travelling it’s a brain-food, if ever there was a brain—­” He dropped the mug, and stumbled back into the heap of sleeping children, fixing a ghastly stare on Marcia.

She ran toward him.  “Mr. Kinney!”

“No, you don’t!—­no, you don’t!”

“Why, don’t you know me?  Mrs. Hubbard?”

“He—­he—­told me you—­was dead!” roared Kinney.

“He told you I was dead?”

“More’n a year ago!  The last time I seen him!  Before I went out to Leadville!”

“He told you I was dead,” repeated Marcia huskily.  “He must have wished it!” she whispered.  “Oh, mercy, mercy, mercy!” She stopped, and then she broke into a wild laugh:  “Well, you see he was wrong.  I’m on my way to him now to show him that I’m alive!”

XL.

Halleck woke at daybreak from the drowse into which he had fallen.  The train was creeping slowly over the track, feeling its way, and he heard fragments of talk among the passengers about a broken rail that the conductor had been warned of.  He turned to ask some question, when the pull of rising speed came from the locomotive, and at the same moment the car stopped with a jolting pitch.  It settled upon the track again; but the two cars in front were overturned, and the passengers were still climbing from their windows, when Halleck got his bewildered party to the ground.  Children were crying, and a woman was led by with her face cut and bleeding from the broken glass; but it was reported that no one else was hurt, and the trainmen gave their helplessness to the inspection of the rotten cross-tie that had caused the accident.  One of the passengers kicked the decayed wood with his boot.  “Well,” he said, “I always like a little accident like this, early; it makes us safe the rest of the day.”  The sentiment apparently commended itself to popular acceptance; Halleck went forward with part of the crowd to see what was the matter with the locomotive:  it had kept the track, but seemed to be injured somehow; the engineer was working at it, hammer in hand; he exchanged some dry pleasantries with a passenger who asked him if there was any chance of hiring a real fast ox-team in that neighborhood, in case a man was in a hurry to get on to Tecumseh.