n the edge of the hair on his forehead, from
which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one
arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it;
and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.

And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special
as it sped away toward Chicago.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The End--and a Beginning.

As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an
end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to
matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the
return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.
The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and
I believe there were columns about it in the Associated Press reports. I
doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning
papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From
these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come
into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the
people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with
truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery
grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from
freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of
hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with
the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured,
having sustained a broken arm and a dangerous wound in the forehead.
Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should
this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very
critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was
uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will
find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of
its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J.
J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight
injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May
Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. & G. W., being benumbed by the
cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent
Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his
sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls,
and sapped of his strength