“Philip,” she interrupted, with an attempt at nonchalance, “do you happen to have those matches handy? We might as well look at the baby again if you have.”
The first match blew out immediately. So did the second. He suggested that they should stop the carriage and borrow the lamp from the driver.
“Oh, I don’t want all that bother. Try again.”
They entered the little wood as he tried to strike the third match. At last it caught. Harriet poised the umbrella rightly, and for a full quarter minute they contemplated the face that trembled in the light of the trembling flame. Then there was a shout and a crash. They were lying in the mud in darkness. The carriage had overturned.
Philip was a good deal hurt. He sat up and rocked himself to and fro, holding his arm. He could just make out the outline of the carriage above him, and the outlines of the carriage cushions and of their luggage upon the grey road. The accident had taken place in the wood, where it was even darker than in the open.
“Are you all right?” he managed to say. Harriet was screaming, the horse was kicking, the driver was cursing some other man.
Harriet’s screams became coherent. “The baby—the baby—it slipped—it’s gone from my arms—I stole it!”
“God help me!” said Philip. A cold circle came round his mouth, and, he fainted.
When he recovered it was still the same confusion. The horse was kicking, the baby had not been found, and Harriet still screamed like a maniac, “I stole it! I stole it! I stole it! It slipped out of my arms!”
“Keep still!” he commanded the driver. “Let no one move. We may tread on it. Keep still.”