These Twain

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX DEATH AND BURIAL Albert Benbow was at the front-door. Edwin curbed the expression of his astonishment. "Hello, Albert!" "Oh! You aren't gone to bed?" "Not likely. Come in. What's up?" Albert, with the habit of one instructed never to tread actually on a doorstep lest it should be newly whitened, stepped straight on to the inner mat. He seemed excited, and Edwin feared that he had just learnt of Auntie Hamps's illness and had come in the middle of the night ostensibly to make enquiries, but really to make a grievance of the fact that the Benbows had been "kept in ignorance." He could already hear Albert demanding: "Why have you kept us in ignorance?" It was quite a Benbow phrase. Edwin shut the door and shut out the dark and windy glimpse of the outer world which had emphasised for a moment the tense seclusion of the house. "You've heard of course about the accident to Ingpen?" said Albert. His hands were deep in his overcoat pockets; the collar of the thin, rather shabby overcoat was turned up; an old cap adhered to the back of his head. While talking he slowly lifted his feet one after the other, as though desiring to get warmth by stamping but afraid to stamp in the night. "No, I haven't," said Edwin, with false calmness. "What accident?" The perspective of events seemed to change; Auntie Hamps's illness to recede, and a definite and familiar apprehension to be supplanted by a fear more formidable because it was a fear of the unknown. "It was all in the late special Signal!" Benbow protested, as if his pride had been affronted. "Well, I haven't seen the Signal. What is it?" And Edwin thought: "Is somebody else dying too?" "Fly-wheel broke. Ingpen was inspecting the sliphouse next to the engine-house. Part of the fly-wheel came through and knocked a...