While Mrs. Argenter’s maid was bringing out the tray with delicate black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries, and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming crystal flagon,—­and ranging them all on the rustic veranda table,—­something very different,—­very grim,—­at which the occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open doors,—­was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants’ Union Telegraph Company’s Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch, addressed to “Mrs. I.M.  Argenter, Dorbury, Mass.,” and signed “Philip Burkmayer, M.D.”

Nobody knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially, when the office in State Street would be closed.  Closed, with that name outside the door that stood for nobody now.

The news must go bare and unbroken to her.

Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just handing the slip to the attendant.

“Stop; give me that again, a minute,” he said; and tearing it in two, he wrote another, and then another.

“Send this on at once, and the second in an hour,” he said; as if they might have been prescriptions to be administered.  “They may both be delivered together after all,” he continued to himself, as he turned away.  “But it is all I can do.  When a weight is let drop, it has got to fall.  You can’t ease it up much with a string measured out for all the way down!”

The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came in after her half-hour supper time.  She set the wires and responded, and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins.

“Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick,” and so on.  The girl’s face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along.  She answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door.

“Sim!  Here—­quick!” she called to a youth opposite, in a stable-yard.

“This has got to go down to the Argenter Place.  And mind how you give it.  It’s bad news.”

“How can I mind?” said Sim, gruffly.  “I spose I must give it to who comes.”

“You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or the minister, or somebody.  ’Tain’t fit for it to go right to her, I know.  Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can, besides lightning!”

“Donno’s I can go travellin’ round after ’em, if that’s what you mean,” said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket, and turning off.

Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty covered wagon that did telegraph errands.  Red Squirrel did not quite like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in.