Robert Hardy's Seven Days: A Dream and Its ConsequencesSheldon, Charles M.
Religion
Robert Hardy's Seven Days: A Dream and Its Consequences
Sheldon, Charles M.
Christian fiction
The baggage car and tender had fallen in such a way that the trucks
rested upright on the ice, and the position of the timbers was
relatively that of the train before it had left the track. One
day-coach lay upon its side, but had broken completely in two, as if
some giant hand had pulled it apart, leaving the ragged ends of timbers
projecting toward one another in such curious fashion that if the two
ends of the car had been pushed together the splintered beams would
have fitted into place almost as if made on a pattern. The other
day-coach had fallen upon one end, and one-third of it was under water.
The other end resting partly against the broken car, stuck up in the
air like some curious, fantastic pillar or leaning tower.
Mr. Hardy was conscious of all this and more as he heard the groans of
the injured and the cries of those begging to be released from the
timbers under which they had been caught. But his own children! Never
had he loved them as now.
The crowd of people had increased to a mob. The confusion was that of
terror. Mr. Hardy rushed about the wreck searching for his children, a
great throbbing at his heart as he thought of their probable fate, when
the sweetest of all sounds, Bessie's dear voice, came to him, and the
next minute he had caught up the child as she ran to him and strained
her to his breast as in the old days when he had carried her about the
house and yard.
"Where are Will and Clara?"
"O father, they're here! and Will wasn't hurt much more than I was; but
Clara has fainted, and she is lying down over here."
Bess dragged her father out across the ice to the edge of the bank,
where a number of the victims had been laid on the cushions of the
seats, some dead, some dying. There lay Clara, very white and still,
with Will bending over her, himself bleeding from several wounds about
the head and hands, but still conscious and trying to restore his
sister.
Mr. Hardy kneeled down in the snow by his son's side. Will was not
surprised at seeing him there; but he sobbed excitedly: "Oh, she is
dead!"
"No," replied her father; "she is not."
Clara stirred, and her lips moved; but she did not open her eyes, and
then her father noticed that a strange mark lay over her face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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