[CHAPTER X.]
AT DEAD OF NIGHT.
I gaze on her frozen face,
Her mystical, sightless eyes.
And now—even now—her grace
The power of death defies.
W. J. Benners, Jr.
Kathleen lay still and white under the starless sky, like one dead, and there was no one to come to her rescue, for the telegraph operator, busy at his instrument, dreamed not of her proximity, and at this hour of the night there were no loiterers about in the village. Swiftly and silently had the fiend escaped, and it was most probable that day would dawn ere any one would discover the beautiful girl lying out there in the rear of the depot upon the damp, muddy ground, dead and cold.
But to return to Boston, which our heroine had so unceremoniously quitted.
Her last thought as the train steamed away with her was of Ralph Chainey, the handsome actor, who had looked so tenderly into her eyes, and who had whispered as he held her hand at parting: "I hope we shall meet again."
Her tears had started at the memory.
"It is all over," she sighed. "He will be gone away from Boston before I go back, and I shall never see him again."
But at that very moment events were shaping themselves in Ralph Chainey's life so as to bring him to her side again.