"Step back! Step back! Here comes another train," cried Judith. "How awfully human that red light blazes in front of the engine! It frightens me! Oh, be careful."
Storms had flung one arm around the girl's waist and forced her to the very edge of the platform, as if about to help her leap across the rails, but she pressed back in terror and clung to him till the train passed by.
"Why, what makes you tremble so? What did you shriek for?"
"I was so near the edge the hot steam swept over me."
"Over me, too. The engine lurched up so suddenly that I nearly lost my balance; but that was nothing to get frightened about. Come, now, the coast is clear, and the old people will be expecting us. You are not so tired that we cannot walk from the station?"
Judith laughed.
"Tired? Oh, no. I could walk twenty miles if they only ended at your home. You don't know how I have longed for a sight of it!"
"Come, then. We will go across the park. It is the nearest way, and you know it best."
Judith did not answer; her usual high spirits were dampened. She only folded the scarlet sacque over her bosom, and prepared to follow Storms, breathing heavily, she could not have told why.
No other passengers left the train at that station, and, without entering the building, these two passed into the village in mutual stillness. Once beyond that, Storms kept the highway until they reached the side-gate in the park wall.