Uneasy! Frances worked that morning as she had never done in her life, swept, dusted, cleaned from one room to another. Susan would not have allowed the labor for an hour; Roxie was glad enough to get it done for her. Frances worked, piling up the moments, worked, and yet heard every footstep in the corridor outside; at each fresh footfall her heart beat to suffocation, then as they died away she drew long breaths and turned to her tasks. At last, beyond the noon, the telephone rang. Frances had the receiver at her ear, before the ringing stopped. "Hello!" she called, "who is it?" "Frazier!" The receiver almost fell from her hand. "Well!" and over the long distance wire faintly was coming, "that old woman, Susan, sent a boy over here just now, and said to 'phone you to come out there right away and bring the doctor!" "Bill," said the girl to herself, with a sobbing sigh of relief. "All right!" she called, "I'll come at once!" "Bill is worse," she told herself, as with trembling hands she rang up first the stables, and then the doctor. The doctor would go; she would call for him at once. Before she turned away, her father opened the door. On his face she saw the tragedy she awaited. "Montague is drowned!" he cried. "My God!" for Frances had gone down in a heap on the hall floor, the receiver swinging from side to side where she wrenched it as she fell. "Susan! Roxie! bring me some water!" "No!" Frances was struggling upright, "let me go, father! I don't want anything!" to Roxie; "go on!" she waved her back to the kitchen impatiently. "How did you hear?" she whispered as the scared darkey shut the door behind her. "His horse was found this morning, dripping, spent, riderless." The professor was white as his daughter. "I--I must telegraph his father!" "Don't!" pleaded Frances, "don't; he might be safe yet somewhere!" The professor cut her short with a motion of his hand. "If he were, don't you suppose we'd know! And he left my house!" he said bitterly. Frances' head drooped. "What will his father think of me?" he added. It was not of others' words she was thinking; it was what her own heart was telling her in great heavy throbs. "You have killed him! You killed him!" She put her hands up dully to her ears, but the sound was only the louder. "Frances!" Something in her face, her heavy drooping as she started up the stair frightened her father, "What are you going to do?" "I am going out to Susan's; she sent for me to bring the doctor out." "You'd better let him go alone." "I'm sure Susan wants me, or she would never have given such a message. If there is anything I can do for her I ought to do it!" Her broken sentences were spoken from the stair as she went up.