CHAPTER XII.

A FATAL JOURNEY.

An awful sign stands in her house of life, An enemy—a fiend—lurks close behind The radiance of her planet. She is warned! COLERIDGE.

I see a trifler smiling As in delighted visions on the brink Of a dread chasm! HEMANS.

When they reached the Paddington Station Brandon Coyle alighted, paid and discharged their cab, and led Kit into the waiting-room to remain while he went to take the tickets.

A few minutes later he returned and gave her his arm to the middle compartment of a first-class carriage which was empty.

The short December afternoon was drawing rapidly to a close.

The rain had entirely ceased, and the clouds were breaking up, and as they reached the open country the sun was setting behind the western hills.

Not a word had been spoken between the passengers since they left the station.

Kit leaned from the window and gazed at the setting sun very much as she used to gaze at it from the nursery windows at the Miston rectory.

Soon the transient glory of the after-glow faded entirely away, and the gray twilight came on.

Still Kit looked from the window. Star after star came out.

“Seems loike they were loighting the candles one after another up there, doan’t it?” she inquired.

Coyle grunted some sarcastic but inaudible reply.

At the next station the guard opened the door of their compartment and lighted the lamp.

When the train moved on again, Kit drew in her head. The light within the carriage prevented her from seeing anything in the darkness outside.

They were passing through a flat, dreary portion of the country, in the hour when no lights gleamed from the windows or doors of wayside dwellings, when all without was dark, still and gloomy; no sights to be seen but heavy, heavier and heaviest shadows, no sound to be heard but the low monotonous thunder of the swiftly-rushing train.

Within the compartment nothing but the railroad lamp, reflected by its silver sconce, and shining down upon the crimson paddings, gilded cornices, gay tassels and gleaming little mirrors of the fixtures, and upon the sullen form of Brandon Coyle, wrapped in his dark ulster and with his black cap pulled down half over his face. He was apparently sound asleep.

So poor Kit fell into thought, and this mood brought even to her some spirit of self-questionings and self-rebukes.

For the first time she reflected on the anxiety and distress she must have caused them all, even the old grandmother who had brought her up—anxiety and distress in which they must have lived all this time of her absence, during which she had never once written to relieve them with the news of her safety.

And with this thought the poor girl fell asleep, in penitence for her own impulsive evil doings, fell asleep softly, sweetly, unsuspiciously—but nevermore to awaken in this lower world.

Another hour of darkness passed on.

The rush and thunder of a huge freight train coming from the opposite direction startled Brandon Coyle from his fitful slumbers.

He rubbed his eyes, waited until the deafening noise of the freight train passed away, and then drew out his watch and looked at it.

An exclamation of dismay burst from him.

“_Now ——!_” he cried, with a terrible oath. “It wants a quarter to twelve! In another ten minutes we shall pass the junction! No time to be lost now! It must be done at once!”

He stooped forward and looked at Kit. She was leaning back in her corner, sleeping soundly, like a baby, with her beautiful golden hair in disorder and her face turned up to the light—a healthy, blooming, peaceful, lightly breathing face.

Any beholder might have loved and pitied it for its infantile beauty and simplicity and its utter helplessness in sleep.

But there was no pity in the cruel, murderous eyes that glared upon it then.

“I might do the job now, without having to use the chloroform, only she is so closely wrapped up I could not get at the right spot for a swift and sure blow without waking her and—getting up a noise perhaps. Let me see.”

He began to examine her clothing; but the thick fronts of her waterproof cloak, wrapped and twined around her folded arms, could not be disturbed without waking her.

“_The throat_,” he muttered to himself; but then her long scarf vail was doubled over her hat and wound around her neck with the long shining tresses of her luxuriant, dishevelled hair in a way that could not be disarranged without rousing her. Still, however, he gazed and gloated over that throat.

“It is but a flimsy thing,” he said, and he put his hand upon the vail very lightly.

There are sleepers whom the loudest thunder could not awaken, but whom the lightest touch would arouse.

Kit was one of these. She stirred at the feather-like touch of her own scarf vail as it was moved by Brandon Coyle. She stirred, and he shrank away.

“It won’t do!” he muttered to himself. “I must not risk waking and frightening her—a struggle would be fatal to my purpose, at least to my escape. No, I must put her in the deeper sleep of chloroform and then finish the work. And all this before the train reaches the junction.”

He hastily consulted his watch again.

“Only eight minutes left! I must be quick!” he muttered.

He had turned very pale and was breathing hard.

He seized his brandy-flask, took a long drink, and then replaced it.

Next from his breast-pocket he took the bottle of chloroform and a piece of sponge, which he proceeded to saturate with the deadly sedative. Then he held it to the nose of the poor, sleeping beauty—lightly at first, until she had breathed in enough to make it safe for him to press the sponge over her nose and mouth and over her whole face with a fold of her cloak.

When he was satisfied that she was quite insensible he put away the anæsthetic quickly and as quickly drew forth a fine, thin, sharp stiletto.

With his left hand he invaded the folds of her cloak, and then the opening of her sack and basque, until he felt the warm bosom and the beating heart—beating slowly and feebly under the effects of the chloroform. Here he held the fingers of his left hand, while with the coolness and caution and ruthless cruelty of a demon, he guided the point of his fine stiletto, in his right-hand, to the vital spot, and drove it in up to the hilt!

The slain girl shuddered through all her fine frame, and then grew still in death; yet it must have been only a mechanical spasm. She could have felt no pain, and known no change until she awoke in the upper world.

Brandon Coyle, with his face pale and rigid, his teeth set, his eyeballs starting from his head, his whole frame trembling, stood holding the hilt of the dagger in his hand and gazing upon his victim for a minute, and then he slowly drew the dagger out, and wiped it on an inner fold of her cloak, and he hid it again in his bosom.

He took another drink of brandy and drained his flask.

Then his next care was to pose the body so that it might appear to be sleeping.

He did this with great ingenuity and effect—sitting her up, reclining on her right side, with her head supported by the corner of the carriage; then he folded her waterproof cloak loosely but completely around her form, so as to conceal the crimson witness that was spurting like a little fountain from her wound. Then he covered her face with her vail, and put her traveling-bag in her hand, bending the fast stiffening fingers around the handle, and placing it in such a rest that it could not drop.

Having done this, he sat down and contemplated the effect.

He smiled grimly, even while he shuddered.

The illusion was perfect in his eyes, and might, he thought, deceive any one who did not attempt to arouse the apparent sleeper. She seemed a young woman who had deliberately tucked herself up and covered her face for a comfortable “snooze,” and had taken excellent care to grasp a fast hold on her traveling-bag while she indulged in a nap.

He had seen hundreds of women asleep in such a position.

The warning whistle of the engine told him they were now approaching the junction, where the Liverpool down train would pass in a few minutes. And by that train he meant to get off and escape to the steamer that was to sail for New York.

He gave a last look at the _tout ensemble_ he had arranged. He thought he could not improve it.

He gathered together all his “traps,” and then lowered the light of the lamp, and waited for the stopping of the train, which was already slowing into the station.

He saw that the Liverpool express was coming in from the opposite direction.

As soon as the train stopped he opened the door of his compartment, sprang out, and shut it again.

“All right, sir! I will lock it and keep it for you,” said the obliging guard, turning the key and then going off to other carriages, for a large number of people were getting off and as many getting on the train.

Brandon Coyle hurried across the platform to the refreshment-room, and through that to the ticketoffice, where he purchased a through ticket to Liverpool, and then he flew as if he felt the foul fiend behind him, and thrust his ticket into the hand of the guard, who naturally ascribed his agitation to haste and anxiety to catch the Liverpool express, and so hurried him into a carriage just a moment before the train started.

In the meantime the guard of the Northwestern Express on the other track waited near the door of the reserved compartment for the return of his generous passenger.

Presently out from the refreshment-room came a gentleman in an ulster and a traveling cap—a gentleman whose general appearance was so exactly like Brandon Coyle’s that in the imperfect light the anxious guard took him to be the man for whom he was looking.

“All right, sir! Here you are! Look sharp, please, sir! The train’s off!” he exclaimed, unlocking and throwing open the door of the reserved compartment.

The stranger nodded and sprang into the compartment, wherein there was but one other passenger—a woman, apparently fast asleep.

The stranger politely seated himself on the opposite seat, at an angle farthest from her.

The guard closed the door and the train started with its living and its dead.

[Illustration: [Fleuron]]