"Thank you, sir."
Paul attended to his errand, and in half an hour Mrs. Palmer received the following message:
"An accident has happened, but I am safe. I shall not return to-night. Am taking care of a gentleman who is hurt.
"Paul."
Fortunately this was the first intelligence Paul's mother received of the railroad disaster, so that she had no time to feel frightened. Had she heard the boys crying the extra containing an account of the accident, she would have been in terrible suspense.
"Heaven be thanked," she ejaculated, devoutly, "that my boy has been preserved!"
She sent out Grace to buy an extra as soon as it appeared, and shuddered as she read the terrible details.
Stephen, too, read the paper, but he could not tell whether Paul was hurt, for no list of names was as yet transmitted.
"Why, that's Paul's train!" he soliloquized. "Ten to one he's killed or wounded. I don't want him killed, but if he's only broken a limb, it may teach him a lesson."
What the lesson was, Stephen did not specify, and it might have been hard to say why his young brother needed a lesson, unless it had been criminal in him to work diligently to support his mother and sister. He had declined to contribute to the support of an able-bodied brother, and my readers may be inclined to think with me that he was quite justified in that.