A delay so prolonged must mean something. If it meant some rearrangement of plan, or unexpected detention at the port of some Pacific Island, then surely a letter would have come. Nay, Lucy felt certain that if Charlie knew that any suspense were likely to arise, then a telegram would have arrived. Charlie and she had made their thrifty little pre-arrangements on that score. His firm had a code name, and they had agreed that this, with the name “Challoner”—the word “saw” to stand for “safe and well”—was to suffice for Lucy in case of any unforeseen contingencies. But no letter came and no such telegram came! Alarm had now a wider basis than anxiety for Charlie’s health. An inquiry sent to Mrs. Grant in Peterhead promptly brought back a quite remarkably brief answer that she too had heard nothing. Inquiries made at the London office of the shipping firm concerned with the _Slains Castle_ elicited that they too had no tidings, though they made light of the fact, and dwelt on the many delays to which sailing-vessels were subject. Lucy’s anxiety swamped all her other worries, though unconsciously to herself those worries might still prey on the nerve and fortitude which endurance of the great trial demanded. What did it matter now when the little china tea-set which had been one of her birthday gifts to Charlie was dashed to the ground and almost every piece of it shivered to fragments? It grieved her once; now it did not affect her at all, save as a type of the general wreckage into which life seemed breaking up. She did not give much attention to Clementina’s eagerly-tendered defence concerning the accident, given thus— “I had nothing to do with it, ma’am. I was in the back kitchen at the time, and I’d left it sitting safely on the dresser. Then all of a sudden I heard the crash, and when I looked in, there it was—all in fragments on the floor.” “You must have placed it too near the edge of the dresser, Clementina,” urged Miss Latimer, “and the slight oscillation caused by some heavy vehicle passing by must have caused it to tilt over.” It was strange that Clementina repudiated this explanation. “I didn’t hear any heavy traffic,” she answered. “There’s never much of it near here, anyway. No, ma’am, such things will happen sometimes, and there’s no accounting for them and there’s no use in trying to do it.”