"I do love him," I sobbed. "And oh—I don't know how to bear it!" "Catch me, when I was a girl, saying I loved a man before he'd said he loved me!" I heard mother mutter to herself. "Whatever has come over the girls nowadays! Not a scrap of proper self-respect." But she touched my hand again, and patted it. "Come! you've got to be brave," says she. "I wouldn't give in too easy." "I do mean—to try," I managed to say. "Yes, I'm sure you do," says she. And she walked me back along the path, and then again to the end, and back a second time. How quiet and natural everything did seem! Looking back to that hour, it is wonderful to me to think of us two, loitering out to and fro, getting the fresh air, and having our talk, with never so much as a fancy of what was just about to happen. Isn't that how we go through life: step by step onward, none of us able ever to see where the next step will land us? If it wasn't for the thought of a Father's Hand over all, managing and arranging for us, we should have good reason to be frightened. Sometimes one does get frightened trying to peer ahead. But it was not so with me just then. Nothing was farther from my mind than the fear of any fresh trouble. It seemed to me I had enough to bear. I was stepping along slowly beside mother, gazing down on the ground, when suddenly mother stopped short, and I heard such a strange sound from her! It was as if she wanted to speak, and couldn't. I looked up quick, thinking she must be taken ill; and she was the most extraordinary colour, not white, nor grey, but a mixture of both, and her lips parted and stiff. "Mother!" I began, in a frightened way; and it flashed over me how if she was going to die it would be my fault for grieving her so. But before I could say another word, the sound came again; and I saw her eyes staring, and her hand pointing at something —something down below, on the line, nearer the station. Quick as lightning I turned my eyes down there, and saw the whole! Folks say moments are all of the same length. I don't know. It don't seem to me they can be. For that next moment was the longest I ever lived through in my life. It stretched out and out in an awful way; and yet it couldn't have been more than a moment. If it had been, things would have ended different. There would have been time, which there wasn't. There's a danger to men always, near and about the line, which outside folks don't understand. They're always within hearing of trains, and they get so used to the sound that at last they don't hear it, hardly. If they are not on the watch, a train might rush by within a few yards, and they wouldn't notice the stir. It's natural, seeing we get used to pretty near everything which we have always in everyday life; but it means danger. Many a poor fellow has been maimed, or even killed, just through being overmuch accustomed to the station sounds, and so not hearing the train that was bearing down upon him.