A telegram is always alarming to those who are unfamiliar with such startling messages; and even in these accustomed days there are few women who open one without a tremor. But at the time of which we write, they were unusual and inevitably meant something tragical. Betty stood gaping with excitement and terror, looking on, and Miss Jean let her knitting drop on her knee, and turned her sharp eyes towards her niece, while little Milly, pressing close to her sister, interposed her blond head almost between Marjory and the brief, fated letter. Somehow, as she read it, she felt in the suddenness of the shock a conviction that she had known it all along, mingled with a curious confused self-reproach for the levity of her thoughts about that man’s shadow. She read it, and her head seemed to buzz and shoot as if a hundred wheels had started into motion, and then stood still. She looked round at her aunt, as if across a sudden distance at once of time and of space; all the colour fled from her cheeks, and her voice changed like her feelings. “Tom has had a bad accident,” she said. “God bless us! Marjory, you’re trying to break it to me quietly; the boy’s dead.” “No!” said Marjory, with a slight shiver. “A bad accident; read it, aunty. And, Milly, run quick and get on your things.” Miss Jean, sobered too in a moment, took the terrible missive, which, to her ignorant eyes, looked something diabolical. It was from somebody in England she made out, and was worded with what she felt to be cruel conciseness. “Tom has had a bad accident; thrown from his horse; symptoms dangerous. He wishes you to tell his father; and to come to him at once.” “It may be a lie,” said Miss Jean in a low voice, and trembling; “very likely it’s a lie. There’s no beginning and no ending; and the man, if it is a man, has not signed his name.” “Oh, I know his, name; he is one of Tom’s friends. It is no lie!” said Marjory. And then she added, trembling too: “Aunt Jean, don’t you feel, like me, that you always knew this would be the end?” “The end! Who’s speaking of the end?” cried Miss Jean impatiently; and then, all at once, she fell crying and sobbing. “Oh, poor Thomas, poor Thomas; that was so very proud of his boy! Who’s to tell him?” “Will I run for the Minister?” said Betty, who had come back with Marjory’s hat in her hand, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and all the excitement of a great family event in her mind. “The Minister is the right person to tell the father such ill news,” said Miss Jean; “and it’s best to have him at hand, whatever happens. Betty, you can run--” Marjory put up her hand to stop the eager messenger. In spite of herself, even at that moment of excitement, a vision of Dr. Murray clearing his throat, and preparing his way by a little speech about the vicissitudes of life gleamed before her. She could see him hemming and taking out his handkerchief with a look as tragically important as if he were the chief actor in the scene.