A freight-train was just coming in, slowly but heavily. Sharley, as she stepped aside to let it pass, fixed her eyes upon it for a moment, then, with a little hesitation, stopped to pick up a bit of iron that lay at her feet,--a round, firm rod-end,--and placed it diagonally upon the rail. The cars rumbled by and over it. Sharley bent to see. It was crushed to a shapeless twist. Her face whitened. She sat down and shivered a little. But she did not go home. The Evening Accommodation was due now in about ten minutes. Girls, if you think I am telling a bit of sensational fiction, I wish you would let me know. "It would be quick and easy," thought Sharley. The man of whom she had read in the Journal last night,--they said he must have found it all over in an instant. An instant was a very short time! And forty years,--and the little black silk apron,--and the cards laid up on a shelf! O, to go out of life,--anywhere, anyhow, out of life! No, the Sixth Commandment had nothing to do with ending one's self! An unearthly, echoing shriek broke through the noise of the storm,--nothing is more unearthly than a locomotive in a storm. Sharley stood up,--sat down again. A red glare struck the white mist, broadened, brightened, grew. Sharley laid her head down with her small neck upon the rail, and--I am compelled to say that she took it up again faster than she laid it down. Took it up, writhed off the track, tumbled down the banking, hid her face in a drift, and crouched there with the cold drops on her face till the hideous, tempting thing shot by. "I guess con-sumption would be--a--little better!" she decided, crawling to her feet. But the poor little feet could scarcely carry her. She struggled to the street, caught at the fences for a while, then dropped. Somebody stumbled over her. It was Cousin Sue--Halcombe Dike's Cousin Sue. "Deary me!" she said; and being five feet seven, with strong Yankee arms of her own, she took Sharley up in them, and carried her to the house as if she had been a baby. Sharley did not commit the atrocity of fainting, but found herself thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy and blankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes, speculated a little. Had _she_ anybody's wedding-cards laid up on a shelf? She had the little black apron at any rate. Poor Cousin Sue! Should she be like that? "Poor Cousin Charlotte!" people would say.