"Is Mr. Strafford come back?" she said. "He will bring us good news, I think."
"He has not come yet," Lucia said; but almost as she spoke, footsteps were heard outside. Mrs. Hall hurried to open the door, and Mr. Strafford came in.
"They are safe?" Mrs. Costello asked.
"Yes; all three. There was the man and two boys—one of them his son. The steamer's boat picked up the boys almost immediately. The man's arm is broken; and he was carried a little way down the stream before they found him."
"Are they at Claremont?"
"Yes. They will go back home by the steamer to-morrow, and you will hear more of them when you return to Cacouna."
"And the boat?"
"No one knows anything of that. In the darkness and confusion it must have floated away with the current."
There was another question to ask, but she stopped, scarcely knowing how to ask it. Mr. Strafford understood her silence.
"The man told me," he said, "that the coffin was on deck, and that when the steamer struck them the boat capsized. He himself clung to the side for a moment when it was upside down in the water, so that everything on board, which was not secured, must have gone to the bottom."