Alas! as if it were of any use to try to stave off the knowledge of such a calamity! An hour later Mr. Wedderburn’s sober step sounded upon the gravel, coming up from the train. Mrs. Dalyell sat still in her chair, not running to meet him as the others did. “Oh, I shall hear it soon enough--I shall hear it soon enough!” she said to herself. His very step had tragedy in it; and she knew before she saw him that something dreadful had happened, that the failure of that telegram, which Robert had never before omitted to send her, was but too well explained. Something like a sweeping gust of fatal wind seemed to flow through the house--a chill consciousness of coming trouble, calling out everybody from above and below to hear the news. And then there was a terrible cry, and then a dread stillness fell over Yalton--like the stillness before a storm. There was one strange thing, however, which happened that fatal afternoon, and which Fred could never forget. As he went upstairs to his own room, which was in the upper storey, a pale and miserable ghost of the cheerful youth he had been yesterday, he saw old Janet standing at the end of the passage which led to her room. She put out her long arm, out of the folds of her tartan shawl. “How is she taking it, Mr. Fred?” she asked. Janet’s eyes were deep, and shone with a strange fire. Her face was full of excitement and agitation--but not of grief, although she had been devoted to the master, who was also her nursling. “How is your mother taking it?” There was a gleam of strange curiosity in her eyes. “Taking it?” cried Fred. “Have you no heart that you ask such a question? My mother is heartbroken--as we all are,” said the lad, his voice giving way to the half-arrested sob, which he was too young to be able to restrain. “But no me--that’s what you’re thinking: though the Lord knows he’s more to me than everything else in this world. Laddie, you’re young--young; and so is your mother. But me, I’m a very old woman. I’ve seen many a strange thing. You’ll mind that you’re to come and ask me if you’re ever very sore troubled in your mind.” “You!” cried Fred. There was something like scorn in his tone. The first distress of youth seems always final, insurmountable, so that it is half an insult to suggest that it will be lived through and other troubles come. But then a sudden chill of horror came over the lad. “You!” he said again, with a pang which he did not himself understand. He remembered what his father had said: “Go to old Janet.” Did she know what his father had said? Had she been aware that this great trouble, this more than trouble, this misery, calamity, was coming? Fred gave the old woman an awed and terrified look--and fled: from her and his own thoughts. CHAPTER V.