"
"No! Impossible!" he stammered. And they stood listening breathlessly;
then, just as the strain began to relax, down through the darkness
from the house behind the trees came a cry:
"Dr. King--"
An instant later the sound of flying steps on the gravel, and a girl's
shrill voice: "Dr. King!"
"Here, Lydia!" William said, running towards the little figure;
"what's the matter!"
Helena, in the shadow of the gate-post, only caught a word:
"Sam--"
And the doctor and the child were swallowed up in the night.
When William King came out of that house of confusion and death, he
found her huddled against the gate-post, haggard, drenched with dew,
waiting for him. He started, with a distressed word, and lifted her in
his arms. "Oh, you ought not to be here; I thought you had gone home
long ago!"
"_Dead?_"
"Yes."
"He--shot--
"Yes. Poor boy; poor, foolish, crazy boy! But it wasn't your fault.
Oh, my poor child!"
She shivered away from him, then without a word turned towards Old
Chester. The doctor walked at her side. It was nearly three, and very
dark. No one saw them as they went through the sleeping streets; at
William's house she stopped, with a silent gesture of dismissal.
"I am going to take you home," he said gently. And a few minutes later
he began to tell her about it. "He was dead when I got there. They
think it was an accident; and it is best they should.
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