Temperance did not break down until she had pulled the sheet up over the face of the dead. Then a great flood of loneliness and grief came over her and she ran down the street in her house dress with her hair stringing out behind. Hardly knowing what she was doing she hurried up the stairs leading to the offices of Timothy Halleck and incidentally to the fly-blown waiting-room of Doctor Whitehead. Brailsford Junction's leading physician was hanging up his prevaricating gilt placard, "Back in Half an Hour." "Well, well, I was just heading for your home," he said. "I hope it ain't anything serious. How is your mother?" "As well as could be expected with you on the case," cried Temperance, bitterly. "She died fifteen minutes ago." "Now ain't that too bad," said Doctor Whitehead, squirting a stream of tobacco juice into a convenient corner. "I suppose you'll want a death certificate, eh?" Temperance burst in upon Timothy Halleck who during that day had met a delegation of indignant mothers complaining about the oldest son of Crazy Jack Bailey, a young wife whose drunken husband beat her up every Saturday night with the stove poker, and the president of the bank who threatened to cut off his credit if he cancelled his mortgage against the Widow Morrison. For once his patience was tried beyond endurance. "No, Miss Crandall, this time I will not listen to your gossip. I've heard all that I can stand for one day. Why can't you leave people alone? Let them live their lives and you live yours. For twenty years I've been wanting to tell you that you're a meddlesome, tale-bearing.... There, there now. Don't cry, Temperance. I realize I was a bit thoughtless. Why ... why, what is it?" "I didn't know who else to tell," Temperance said, hiding her face in her hands. "Mother's dead, Timothy." Temperance Crandall was to remember to her dying day that Timothy Halleck came around the desk and put his arm across her shoulders and told her that he would take care of the funeral arrangements. CHAPTER X 1 The eastbound train had gone shrieking through Brailsford Junction pulled by two engines to buck the drifts. Bundles of Madison papers were tossed from the baggage car as the train passed, and the engineer had waved at Nat Cumlien, the station master. Now in a corner of the station half a dozen rosy-faced young rascals fought and laughed as they stuffed their paper sacks. "Wish I had about ten kids," thought Stud, watching the boys while waiting for the long over-due four-thirty-nine from Chicago. "Six or eight sons and a batch of girls." He sighed as he looked out at the unexpected November blizzard. The telephone wires sang a high monotonous tune. Snow drifted in rippled waves over the tracks and the cinder piles beyond. The station windows rattled in the forty mile gale and the telegraph instrument kept up its incessant, monotonous tattoo.