Everything was still in the motionless caravan, except--it struck him oddly even then--the unconcerned prattling voice of Susy from one of the nearer wagons.

Perhaps a sudden feeling that this was something that concerned HER, perhaps an irresistible impulse overcame him, but the next moment he had leaped to the ground, faced about, and was running feverishly to the front.
The first thing that met his eyes was the helpless and desolate bulk of one of the Silsbee wagons a hundred rods away, bereft of oxen and pole, standing alone and motionless against the dazzling sky! Near it was the broken frame of another wagon, its fore wheels and axles gone, pitched forward on its knees like an ox under the butcher's sledge.

Not far away there were the burnt and blackened ruins of a third, around which the whole party on foot and horseback seemed to be gathered.

As the boy ran violently on, the group opened to make way for two men carrying some helpless but awful object between them.

A terrible instinct made Clarence swerve from it in his headlong course, but he was at the same moment discovered by the others, and a cry arose of "Go back!" "Stop!" "Keep him back!" Heeding it no more than the wind that whistled by him, Clarence made directly for the foremost wagon--the one in which he and Susy had played.