wormed his way he had already found time to scribble a brief paragraph
to the effect that the melancholy event had "shrouded the picturesque
little town of Carver in gloom," and now as he stood on the greensward
near, though not too near, he hastily jotted down the points of
interest with keen anticipation of working out some telling
description on the way home.

Out from the little church where the families of the pair of lovers
had worshipped in summer time for a generation, the two coffins, piled
high with flowers (Harrington knew them reportorially as caskets),
were borne by the band of pall-bearers, stalwart young intimate
friends, and lifted by the same hands tenderly into the hearse. The
long blackness of their frock-coats and the sable accompaniment of
their silk hats, gloves, and ties appealed to the observant faculties
of Harrington as in harmony both with the high social position of the
parties and the peculiar sadness of the occasion. That a young man and
woman, on the eve of matrimony, and with everything to live for,
should be hurled into eternity (a Harringtonian figure of speech) by a
railroad train at a rustic crossing, while driving, was certainly an
affair heartrending enough to invite every habiliment of woe. As he
thus reasoned Harrington became aware that one of the stalwart young
men was looking at him with an expression which seemed to ask only too
plainly, "What the devil are you doing here?"

As a newspaper man of some years' standing Harrington was hardened.
Such an expression of countenance was an almost daily experience and
slipped off the armor of his self-respecting hardihood like water off
the traditional duck's back. When people looked at him like this he
simply took refuge in his consciousness of the necessities of the case
and the honesty of his own artistic purpose. The press must be served