Polly felt everything swim before her eyes; but she looked steadily in his face, and clasped her hands tightly together.
“It’s on the bulletin-board,” repeated Mr. Ferguson, “that the Llewellyn was burned at sea; but the passengers were picked up by one of the Harris line of cattle steamers,” he hurried on as he saw her face, “and carried to Liverpool.”
“Is that all?” gasped Polly hoarsely.
Mr. Ferguson looked into his hat, and then gasped out, “N—no; but perhaps it isn’t true, Mrs. King. It said that the Rev. Joel Pepper was among the lost. That’s all.”
Polly ran through the hall, and out the side door. “Jasper, Jasper!” she was saying over and over in her heart, though her white lips did not move. Would she never reach the little brown house! At last she was speeding up the narrow path and over the well-worn flat stone, and through the old doorway and on into the bedroom, where she threw herself on her knees by Mamsie’s big four-poster, just as she had thrown herself years ago. “Dear God!” she cried now, her face buried in the gay, patched bedquilt, just as it had been on that afternoon so long ago, when in that darkened room, her eyes shadowed by a fear of blindness, they had told her of the worse shadow that hung over Joel, “make me willing to have anything—yes, anything happen; only make me good.”
Polly threw herself on her knees by Mamsie’s big four-poster.
How long she knelt there she never knew. Jasper hurried through the old kitchen, and found her so. “O Polly!” kneeling by her side, he cried, “don’t, don’t, dear! We have each other.”
“O Jasper!” Polly turned, and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face on his breast as he gathered her up closely. “I was going out to watch for you,” she cried remorsefully.
“I’ve only just got home, and they told me you were over here. I’d rather find you here, Polly,” he hastened to add, as he saw her face.