When the house was tidy and full of twilight stillness, Mrs. Harbison put on a clean apron and took her sunbonnet to make her call of condolence. It was likely they would want watchers at Morton’s, and she was ready to do anything. She had helped bear the burden of life and death so long in Fairfield that illness, a new baby, or the mysterious breathless presence in any house was a peremptory invitation to her. The boys were playing hide-and-seek around the warehouse, and as she crossed the open lot she saw the usual line of wise men sitting on the edge of the platform with their legs across the rail, as if they had all agreed to make an offering of their feet to the Juggernaut of the next passing train. Willie darted like a bat or a night bird on his bicycle far up and far down the smooth wagon road. Now he took a turn, and came spinning among the boys, scattering them before him, and escaping as often as they chased him. In one of these excursions he crossed his mother’s way. The last red streaks and high sunset lights were not gone out of the sky. She lifted up her hands and spelled, “Are you starting out to hunt a publisher now?” And Willie laughed and nodded and made her a sign of good-by. The pleasant stillness of the evening fell around her like a blessing as she went on. Fireflies were filling one field, as if a conflagration under that particular ground sent up endless streams of sparks. She smelled the budding elders, and was reminded of tile-like bits in her past, fitted oddly together. Morton lived but a few steps beyond the village. She had been talking a mere moment with Nancy Ellen, and had not yet entered the room where the preacher lay when another neighbor came in with excitement, and said aloud, over the whispered talk of the mourning house, that something was wrong down at the station. “That express has run into something again,” proclaimed the neighbor, “and looks, by the way folks run, as if it wasn’t a cow this time. Enough cows and pigs has been killed by that railroad.” “I haven’t seen the express,” said Mrs. Harbison, feeling her head full of wheels. “It was all quiet when I was there a minute ago.” “The express has stopped. Good reason! There’s something on the track, I tell ye,” insisted the neighbor. Willie’s mother was sure it could not be Willie. He was conscious of his infirmity, and so cautious that she had long ceased to be anxious about him. He knew the times of all the trains with nice exactness, also. Yet she started from the house without speaking another word, and ran until she reached the crowd. The engine stood hissing; it confronted her with the glare of its eye, a horrid and remorseless fate, ready to go its way with bell-clanging and all cheerful noise, no matter who had been ground under its wheels.