Lavinia casts a glance over her shoulder, still flying along, to see whether the train, faintly heard coming up behind them, is yet in sight; and, having done so, pulls herself up to a stop with such sudden violence that her knees rock under her. The horrified cry that accompanies her arrested motion stays Rupert’s flying steps too, though the impetus of his going carries him several paces beyond her before he can stop himself. Astonishment at what can have checked a haste so urgent as hers makes him too look round, gives to his sight also the object that has frozen her flight into a paralysis of still horror. A curve of the line hides the approaching train from their sight, though their ears plainly inform them of its increasing nearness; but at what appears to be about halfway between the point at which they stand and the curve, though in reality it is much nearer to themselves, a little child is clearly seen standing out against the strong yellow light of the May evening--a little child obviously at that most dangerous age which has legs to toddle, but no judgment to guide those legs. Probably it has crept through a gap in the hedge from the pointsman’s cottage, which they had passed close to the locked and climbed gate; but the two spectators of its prowess have no time to speculate as to how it came into its present position of imminent peril. “It is all right; it is on the up line,” Rupert says, with a sort of hiss. “No, it isn’t; it is on the down.” An instantaneous thought leaps from one pair of eyes to the other; and in Rupert’s Lavinia reads a blind terror. That sixtieth part of a second reveals to her that it has been the apprehension of her lifetime to find such a terror in his eyes at some such crisis of his existence--the predominating, all-mastering, terror of an injury to his own skin. If the endangered infant is to be saved, it will not be by him. Without a second glance at her companion--yes, she is _almost_--would to God she could be _quite_ sure afterwards that she had not thrown him one glance of contempt or reproach!--she rushes back along the way she has come at the highest speed of which her already strained limbs and labouring lungs are capable, taking instinctively to the metals themselves, so as not to be impeded by grass and flowers. Will she be in time? She tries to shout a warning to the little toddling thing, but not a sound louder than a useless dissonant whisper will issue from her protesting throat.