and, with recognition, her lips parted in a pitiful smile.

“I� I thought at first that I was dead,” she said.

But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick divined it in her eyes as they searched him. The question was if he knew it was no accident. He gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must pass believing it so.

“I� was� wrong,” she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident pain, with a pause for strength of utterance between each word. “I was always so cocksure I’d never have an accident, and look what I’ve gone and done.”

“It’s a darn shame,” Dick said, sympathetically. “What was it? A jam?”