windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across, one at a time, to the masonry. "I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place. Here's the carriage, Josie!" "Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and Josie drove away. "Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase. "But for a moment I was awfully frightened!" "It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish. "I wonder how deep it was out there!" "Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!" "You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in the top of a tree!" "Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken. CHAPTER XII. In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us. If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial. "It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the _Herald_." I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.