With bated breath, Hugh Rowland, the station-agent, knelt down in the dew-wet grass, and placed his hand over the girl's heart. Although the sweet white face upturned to the gray morning light was as white as death, he cried out sharply to himself: "Her heart still beats! God be praised! There is life in her yet!"

Gathering her in his arms, as though she were a little child, he carried her quickly across lots to the station, and placed her upon a rude bench. Once there, he could control himself no longer. He dropped upon his knees beside her, burying his face in the folds of her wet dress, chafing her hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break.

He had loved the girl lying there so stark and motionless as he had never loved anything in his life before; but he had never dared to tell her of it. Though he was station-agent, and she a telegraph operator, she seemed as far above him as the star is from the earth.

For a moment Hugh Rowland had almost lost control of himself; then he remembered how horribly cold she was, and he had the presence of mind to start a fire in the big stove that always stood in the center of the waiting-room.

[46]

The grateful heat that rose from it quickly brought the breath of life to the girl's white lips. The great, dark, somber eyes opened wide, and she saw the rugged, kindly face of the young station-agent bending over her.

"I found you—you had fainted in the graveyard," he said. "Luckily enough, I was just passing, and I brought you here."

"Oh, why didn't you let me die?" moaned the girl, so bitterly that he was shocked.

"It is very wicked to talk like that," he said, forcing down the great lump that rose in his throat.

"No!" she cried, vehemently. "How could it be very wrong to leave a great, cold, cruel world in which nobody wan............