I asked my brother to describe to me minutely then the looks of the villain as we passed him, for I had half a fear that he might suspect we were watching him. But from what my brother said, I concluded that the fellow was not suspicious of us. They returned to the hotel in due time. He dogged her every step, and she kept aloof from him as much as possible. Finally the time to depart came, and we took the stage together, my brother bidding me good by, shaking my hand with a firm grasp, just as the stage started, and saying,-- "I hope you will have the best success." There was a fervor in his tone, coming from his good heart, which strengthened me, and moved me to stronger resolves than ever to ferret out the iniquity which I knew Le Roy must be engaged in. Mrs. Stevens took the back seat, with her child next to her, and Le Roy crowded in at the other end of it; and although there were only another man and myself as passengers besides, I took the front seat, facing them, in order to have opportunity to study them as quietly as possible. Le Roy attempted conversation at various times. The lady answered him in monosyllables--not inclined at all to carry on the conversation. She seemed to me to be hopeless; looked like one who would rather not be than to be, and quite frequently looked down into her child's eyes with gleams of evident pity, and would then turn away her head, and express, what I took to be, despair. An unfortunate circumstance took place just as we had passed a few rods down the ridge of the great hill, or mountain, which divides Litchfield from "Litchfield Station." There had been a terrible shower the day before,--one of those sudden rains, which come on, gathered up by a fierce wind, and pour down in torrents. The road was badly gullied, and men were there repairing it, having scraped great heaps of earth into the road, not yet spread. "Can I get by?" asked the driver of the coach of some of them. "Yes, go ahead; Seymour's team just went along." The driver pushed on, not checking his horses sufficiently, and coming upon a heap in which was concealed a large stone, the stage toppled, trembled for a second, and we went over, amidst the screams of Mrs. Stevens and her child, and the affrightened groan, "O, O," in a mean, cowardly voice of Le Roy. There was a momentary plunging of the horses and dragging of the stage. The men on the road were at the coach in a moment. The stage had fallen over on the side on which Mrs. Stevens sat, and Le Roy was stepping on her in his attempt to get himself upright, without an apparent particle of consciousness of her presence. Being thrown on my knees, I pushed him upward with my hands, saying,-- "You'll kill this lady, and her child" (who, fortunately, was lying back of her mother, out of harm's way, however); "why don't you take care, sir, what you are doing?" The brutal eyes of the man looked at me with wrath.