She bowed silently and went in, and he turned back and walked up the street. The dusk was falling. A few yards in front of him the lame lamplighter was going his rounds, ladder on shoulder. In every other shop the gas was beginning to gleam. The night was coming, was almost come, yet still above the houses the sky, a pale greenish-blue, was bright with daylight, against which the great tower of the church stood up bulky and black. The young man was in a curious mood. Though he walked the common pavement, he felt himself, as he gazed upward, alone with his thoughts which went back, will he nill he, to his first evening in Claversham. He remembered how free from reproach or stumbling-blocks his path had seemed then, to what blameless ends he had in fancy devoted himself. What works of thanksgiving, small but beneficent as the tiny rills which steal downward through the ferns to the pasture, he had planned. And in the centre of that past dream of the future he pictured now—Kate Bonamy. Well, the reality had been different. He was just beginning to wonder when he would be likely to meet her again, and to dwell with curious pleasure on some of the details of her dress and appearance, when the sudden clatter of hoofs behind him caused him to turn his head. Far down the street a rider had just turned the corner, and was now galloping up the middle of the roadway, the manner in which he urged on his pony speaking loudly of disaster and ill news. Opposite the rector he pulled up and cried out, “Where is the doctor’s, sir?” Lindo turned sharply round and rang the bell of the house behind him, which happened to be Gregg’s. “Here,” he said briefly. “What is it, my man?” “An explosion in the Big Pit at Baerton,” the man replied, almost blubbering with excitement and the speed at which he had come. “There is like to be fifty killed and as many hurt, I was told. But I came straight off.” “When did it happen?” Lindo asked, a wave of wild excitement following his first impulse of horror. “About an hour and a quarter ago, as near as I can say,” the messenger, a farm laborer called from the plough, answered. Dr. Gregg was out, and the clergyman walked by the side of the horse, a crowd gathering behind him as the news spread, to the house of Mr. Keogh the other doctor, who fortunately lived close by. He was at home, and, the messenger going in to tell him the particulars, in five minutes his gig was at the door, The rector, who had gone in too, came out with him, and, without asking leave, climbed to the seat beside him. “Hallo!” said the surgeon, an elderly man, stout and white-haired, “are you coming, too, Mr. Lindo?” “I think,” the rector answered, “that there may be cases in which you can do little and I much. Mr. Walker, the vicar of Baerton, is ill in bed, I know; and as the news has come to me first, I think I ought to go.” “Right you are!” said Mr. Keogh gruffly. “Let go!”