"After this accident?" "I do not see why they should not. An accident two days running would be something remarkable. What about your dream?" "Oh, I will go, Robert. Yes. The dream has done its office and I shall be ever thankful for it." She spoke the last words reverently. Mr. Lake looked at her with surprise. "Clara, don't encourage that fancy of yours," he gravely said, his voice taking almost a stern tone. "To be superstitious at all argues a want of common sense; but to be _foolishly_ superstitious is a great deal worse. No reasonable being, wife of mine, would indulge _that_." "What do you call being foolishly superstitious?" "The remark you have just made--that the dream had done its office, and you should ever feel thankful for it--is an illustration. Had you gone to Guild this morning, you know quite well that we were not to have returned until Tuesday, therefore should not have been in the train to-night." "Something might have occurred to cause us to return," she interrupted. "Granted--for the sake of the argument. We should have travelled in a first-class carriage, as you know; and there is no first-class carriage injured." He paused and looked at her. She could not deny anything he said, and kept silence. "Therefore, what possible bearing that dream could have had upon the accident, or where could be the utility of the warning, which, as you declare, it conveyed to you, not to go to Guild, I cannot see." Neither, it must be confessed, did Clara herself see it; but she did not lose her faith in the dream. Rather believed in it all the more firmly, in what her husband would have called a manner void of all reason. The dream, as she looked at it and expressed it, had "done its work;" and she anticipated the excursion on the morrow with renewed pleasure, springing from a sense of relief. Alas, alas! Poor short-sighted mortals that we are! The working out of the ill, shadowed forth, was only just beginning. The morning rose brilliantly; rather too much so, taken in conjunction with the heat; and the day, as it wore on, promised to be one of the hottest on record. Katterley station was in a bustle not often experienced at the quiet little place. People, idlers and others, crowded it, bent on a journey of curiosity to Coombe Dalton. The deaths from the accident now numbered several, and excitement was rife. Report came that the real cause of the calamity was giving rise to dispute: on the one hand it was said that the driver of the train had dashed through Coombe Dalton station, regardless of the warning red light, held up as a signal that he should stop; on the other it was maintained that no red light had so been held.