When the Sabbath, his holiday, came again, he was abroad in the red frosty dawn, hurrying from stable to breakfast and away. When he rode into town he still had time to go up to the University before the service. He left his horse at the stable and hastened up Main street. The town was yet quiet. On the bridge above the railroad he paused a second looking down at the station below. A train was pulling out. The shriek of the locomotive echoed shrilly among the hills, the smoke hung in billowy clouds close about the smoke-stack, and the tops of the coaches gliding away were white and glistering with frost. Edward had a comfortable feeling of home and cheer as, standing there, he looked down and beyond on spires and housetops and chimney-tops smoke-wreathed; but as he turned to hasten on, he saw, coming slowly along the platform, the professor. Edward hurried back to the flight of steps sunk in the hillside.
The very look of Mr. Holloway gave him a feeling of dismay. His coat collar was turned high about his face, and the pallor of his clear white skin, bitten into purple and red by the chill of the morning, showed clearly framed against it and by his thick black hair streaked with gray. His dark eyes looked solemnly thoughtful. He had an air altogether desolate and distraught. Edward called to him. He started, looked up, and brightened wonderfully.
"Ah! I am glad to see you." He had reached the head of the stairway. "Frances," he added dolefully, "has gone away; I have just been to see her off."
Fool! While he had been standing there happy with dreaming of seeing her, she had been slipping away from him in the glistening coaches he had watched so idly.
"Don't know what possessed her. It was a sudden fancy. Last night she took it into her head all at once. It isn't like Frances to do such things! She was going this morning, she said, and she had us up by daybreak; she was bent on making this early train."
"Where has she gone?" asked Edward, dully.
"Keswick! Her cousin, you know; she can telephone to the store near his farm and have them send out for her. But," he repeated, "I can't think what possessed her."
Had the professor been able to think, to know what sent his daughter running away from him, his wrath had been hard for some one that day.