"Kitty!" I said, with my hand on the room door; "it's I, Jack! don't be frightened."
She gave a little scream, and, it seemed to me, shrank back from me, as if I had been a ghost; but the next instant she sprang into my arms with a glad cry of, "Jack, Jack! is it really you?"
"Yes, Kitty, who else should it be?" I said, reassuringly. "But tell me—how is she? How is Mary? Let me hear the truth."
Kitty looked up brightly: "Mary! oh, she is better, much better, and now that you are here, Jack, she will soon be well!"
I drew a breath of intense relief. Then, touching my little sister's pale, tear-stained face, I asked what had so troubled her.
"Oh! Jack," she whispered, "it was you! I thought you were dead!" She handed me an evening paper, and pointed out a paragraph which stated that a fatal accident had occurred in the Blank Tunnel. A man named John Blount, a commercial traveller, had been killed; it was believed while attempting to walk through the tunnel to the junction station. The body had been found, early the previous morning, by some plate-layers at work on the line. The deceased was only identified by a letter found upon him.
And so, poor fellow, he had met his fate in the very death from which he had saved me! In the midst of my own happiness my heart grew very sorrowful as I thought of him, my unknown friend, whose face I had never seen!
The Royal Humane Society
