"I am not fond of such seeing, Alexa, and will not go out of my way for
it. The misery I can not avoid is enough for me."

But Alexa was out of the room, and in a moment more was running, in as
straight a line as she could keep, across the heath to the low
embankment. Andrew caught sight of her running. He could not see the
line, but convinced that something was the matter, turned and ran in the
same direction.

It was a hard and long run for Alexa, over such ground. Troubled at her
father's indifference, she ran the faster--too fast for thinking, but
not too fast for the thoughts that came of themselves. What had come to
her father? Their house was the nearest! She could not shut out the
conviction that, since succeeding to the property, he had been growing
less and less neighborly.

She had caught up a bottle of brandy, which impeded her running. Yet she
made good speed, her dress gathered high in the other hand. Her long
dark hair broken loose and flying in the wind, her assumed dignity
forgotten, and only the woman awake, she ran like a deer over the
heather, and in little more than a quarter of an hour, though it was a
long moor-mile, reached the embankment, flushed and panting.

Some of the carriages had rolled down, and the rails were a wreck. But
the engine and half the train had kept on: neither driver nor stoker was
hurt, and they were hurrying to fetch help from the next station. At the
foot of the bank lay George Crawford insensible, with the guard of the
train doing what he could to bring him to consciousness. He was on his
back, pale as death, with no motion and scare a sign of life.