There was evidently an accident or a breakdown--a block on the line somewhere, no one knew precisely what. Signals were worked and lights flashed to avert destruction from the front or rear, and when the rush of a coming train was heard, 'the boldest held his breath for a time,' till it swept past--an express--on another line of rails. If she were killed--smashed up horribly like people she had often read of in railways accidents, would Jack be sorry for her? There was a kind of revengeful pleasure in the thought, the conviction that he would be, even while she dropped a few natural tears over her own untimely demise. The excitement grew apace. The next train might _not_ be on the other line, and the mental agony of the travellers lasted for more than an hour--an hour of terror and misery, and of the wildest impatience to Maude, who in the tumult of her spirits would have welcomed the crash, the destruction, and, so far as she was personally concerned, the death by a collision, to end everything. At last the steam was got up again, and slowly the train glided into the brilliant station at York just as dawn was reddening the square towers of its glorious minster, and the pale girl sprang out on the platform to find that the train for Edinburgh had passed nearly two hours before, and that she would have to wait--to wait for hours with what patience she could muster. Great was the evil and distress Hawkey Sharpe, in a spirit of useless revenge, had wrought her. How slow the returning train was--oh, how slow! It seemed to stop everywhere, and to be no sooner off than it stopped again. Stations hitherto unnoticed had apparently sprung up like mushrooms in the night, and the platforms were crowded with people perpetually getting in or going out. How long ago it seemed since last night--since that fatal visit, and since she left her pretty home, if home it was. Even then, in the dire confusion and muddle of her thoughts, they lingered lovingly on the apparently remote memory of the happiest period of her young life--the day when Jack Elliot first said he loved her, and she had the joy of believing him to be entirely her own, to go hand-in-hand with through the long years that were to come--and now--now! Looking forward to ample explanations from him, perhaps an entire reconciliation with him if these explanations were complete--or she knew not what--how the revolving wheels of the train seemed to lag! Then she would close her tear-inflamed eyes and strive not to think at all. Already the Lion mountain of Arthur Seat, and the Gallon with its Grecian columns, were rising into sight, and she would soon be at her destination.