What fatal madness impelled me at that moment to stand and look at a ploughing match that was taking place in a field by the roadside?
For a minute or two my anxiety, my father, the train, all were forgotten in the excitement of that contest.

Then I recovered myself and dashed on like the wind.
Once more (as I thought but for an instant) I paused to examine a gipsy encampment on the border of the wood, and then, reminded by a distant whistle, hurried forward.

Alas! as I dashed into the station the train was slowly turning the corner and I sunk down in an agony of despair and humiliation.
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When I reached home at midnight, my mother met me at the door.
"Well, you are come at last," she said quietly.
"Yes, mother; but father, how is he ?" "Come and see him." I sprang up the stairs beside her.

She opened the door softly, and bade me enter.
My father lay there dead.
"He waited for you all day," said my mother, "and died not an hour ago.
His last words were, `Charlie is late.' Oh, Charlie, why did you not come sooner ?" Then she knelt with me beside my dead father.

And, in that dark lonely chamber, that night, the turning-point of my life was reached.
Boys, I am an old man now; but, believe me, since that awful moment I have never, to my knowledge, dawdled again!.