Leyden had no time to answer him, for at that moment a man advanced from a crowd that blocked up the road in front of them, and, checking the horses, said quickly, "Can't drive any further. Way up yonder blocked with the wreck."
"What wreck?" exclaimed both men with a single voice. "Haven't heard about it?" he replied. "Down-train, this morning, met the up-train, behind time—collision—cars smashed—fifty or sixty killed—as many wounded—terrible accident—no fault anywhere, of course."
But he checked his volubility at sight of the white face that confronted him, and the strong, convulsive grasp that seized his hand. Then in a softened tone he said,
"Hope you an't expecting no one;" and moved back a pace.
There was no answer; for William Leyden had sprung from the wagon, dashing like a lunatic through the group of men on the road-side, and in an instant had cleared the hundred yards between him and the station.
The crowd that stood upon the platform made way for him as he advanced; for they felt instinctively that he had come upon a melancholy quest, and the man whom he had clutched violently as he asked, "Where are the dead?" pointed to the inner room, where lay the mangled corpses of the victims.
Alas! in a few minutes after he had stepped across the threshold his eye fell upon the corpse of a fair-haired little girl, beside whom, one arm half thrown across the child, a woman lay, with a calm, holy expression on her dead face. Just at her crushed feet, which some merciful hand had covered, the body of another child was lying; but the black, wavy hair had been singed, and the white forehead burned and scarred, and the little hands were quite disfigured.
And they had left the dear old land for this! They had borne poverty and separation, and the weariness of waiting; through lingering days of anticipation they had traversed miles upon miles of dangerous ocean to be dashed, on the threshold of a new life, at the portal of realization, into the pitiless, fathomless abyss of eternity! Ah! no; rather to be gathered into the arms of a merciful God—to be folded close to his heart, for ever and ever. Truly his ways are not our ways, and who can understand them?
In a moment more the husband and father had sunk upon his knees beside the lifeless group; but no words came from his lips save "Mauria, Mauria avourneen, acushla machree." Then he would pass his hands caressingly over the ghastly faces, pressing tenderly and often the little childish fingers in his own, and kissing the scarred and disfigured forehead.
He never knew who it was that bore him away from the dreadful spot; what hands prepared his loved ones for the grave, he never knew, and never asked to know. He only remembered waking momentarily from a stupor on that sad night, and seeing the benevolent face of the priest bending over him, and hearing something he was saying about Calvary and the cross, to which he replied half unconsciously, but with a feeling as though there were angels near him, "God's will be done."