As the night wore on, she opened the cherished copy of Dante and tried to read, but the print was too fine for the dim lamp which hung at some distance from her corner. Her head ached violently, and, as sleep was impossible, she put the book back in her pocket, and watched the flitting trees and fences, rocky banks, and occasional houses, which seemed weird in the darkness. As silence deepened in the car, her sense of loneliness became more and more painful, and finally she turned and pressed her cheek against the fair, chubby hand of a baby, who slept with its curly head on its mother's shoulder, and its little dimpled arm and hand hanging over the back of the seat. There was comfort and a soothing sensation of human companionship in the touch of that baby's hand; it seemed a link in the electric chain of sympathy, and, after a time, the orphan's eyes closed--fatigue conquered memory and sorrow, and she fell asleep with her lips pressed to those mesmeric baby fingers, and Grip's head resting against her knee.
Diamond-powdered "lilies of the field" folded their perfumed petals under the Syrian dew, wherewith God nightly baptized them in token of his ceaseless guardianship, and the sinless world of birds, the "fowls of the air," those secure and blithe, yet improvident, little gleaners in God's granary, nestled serenely under the shadow of the Almighty wing; but was the all-seeing, all-directing Eye likewise upon that desolate and destitute young mourner who sank to rest with "Our Father which art in heaven" upon her trembling lips? Was it a decree in the will and wisdom of our God, or a fiat from the blind fumbling of Atheistic Chance, or was it in accordance with the rigid edict of Pantheistic Necessity, that at that instant the cherubim of death swooped down, on the sleeping passengers, and silver cords and golden bowls were rudely snapped and crushed, amid the crash of timbers, the screams of women and children, and the groans of tortured men, that made night hideous? Over the holy hills of Judea, out of crumbling Jerusalem, the message of Messiah has floated on the wings of eighteen centuries: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."
Edna was awakened by a succession of shrill sounds, which indicated that the engineer was either frightened or frantic; the conductor rushed bare-headed through the car; people sprang to their feet; there was a scramble on the platform; then a shock and crash as if the day of doom had dawned--and all was chaos.