The moments seemed like hours. Sên knew that the sinews of his left arms were perilously strained—that was nothing, if only their strength held—and Ivy thought that she was only scratching the strong leather she tried to cut. Oddly so at this hour, the street seemed deserted—no other help in sight or call. One trace gave a little—then snapped. “The other!” Sên commanded. “Don’t get too near when you go round. Keep clear of their legs. Be as quick as you can!” She thought her strength was failing; she knew her legs shook; but she made the attempt and reached the other side and feebly attacked the second trace. Sên’s task was harder now, because of the one severed trace which, light as the little carriage was, had served in the entanglement as some slight cheek on the plunging, straining ponies. A window went up, a colored woman looked out and screamed. A perambulator jolted round the corner. Small beginnings and not helpful ones; but the inevitable crowd was coming at last, and just as the knife slipped from Ivy’s unnerved fingers, a very fat, deliberate policeman sauntered into sight. But he was worthy his uniform, for he instantly saw his need and filled it; ran to Sên’s side, blowing his whistle as he ran, and caught at the near pony’s bit. “I can hold them,” Sên said. “Get the trap off—carefully—there are children under it.” “There would be!” the policeman grumbled. But again he lost no time, and as men and women, sundry children and dogs, and a cautious sprinkling of cats thickened the street into a crowd, and more heads showed at windows, and people on steps, he, unaided, lifted the wreck off, clear from the little bodies beneath. There was blood. Dick lay badly still. Blanche was moaning. Help had come to Sên in abundance now—another policeman, a handsome young Jew—who didn’t need to be told, but did it; a maiden lady who wore a green beige veil over a New England bombazine bonnet and steel-rimmed spectacles on her high-bridged nose; a Jesuit priest and a Salvation corporal. The men were enough to hold the still struggling runaways as securely as Sên had done alone; and the ponies already were growing quieter under the hand and the voice of the old New England woman, speaking to them companionably, as she fearlessly stroked and patted them. So Sên King-lo, with questioning torture in his eyes, Saxon pallor on his tawny face, and sickening pain in his shoulders, left the newcomers in charge there, and went to Ivy just in time to see her kneel down and gather Blanche up in her arms. He saw how gently she did it, saw the look on her face, the tears in her eyes, and that she would not let them fall, and he saw the welcoming gladness on the welcoming baby face as Ivy lifted Blanche up and nested the child’s bleeding face against her girlish breast. Sên lifted motionless Dick and bent his ear to the boy’s face. Dick was breathing.