xious tone.

If any reply were uttered it was drowned by the howling of the wind and
the noise of the workmen.

Again he repeated the question in an agonising cry.

His wife did not reply, but Gertie's sweet little voice was heard saying
faintly--

"I think mother is dead. Oh, take us out, dear father, take us out,--
quick!"

Again John Marrot bowed himself to the task, and exerting his colossal
strength to the utmost, continued to tear up and cast aside the broken
planks and beams. The people around him, now thoroughly aroused to the
importance of haste, worked with all their might, and, ere long, they
reached the floor of the carriage, where they found mother and child
jammed into a corner and arched over by a huge mass of broken timber.

It was this mass that saved them, for the rest of the carriage had been
literally crushed into splinters.

Close beside them was discovered the headless trunk of a young man, and
the dead body of a girl who had been his companion that day.

Gertie was the first taken out. Her tender little frame seemed to have
yielded to the pressure and thus escaped, for, excepting a scratch or
two, she was uninjured.

John Marrot did not pause to indulge in any expression of feeling. He
sternly handed her to the bystanders, and went on powerfully but
carefully removing the broken timbers and planks, until he succeeded in
releasing his wife. Then he raised her in his arms, staggered with her
to the neighbouring bank and laid her down.

Poor Mrs Marrot was crushed and bruised terribly. Her clothes were
torn, and her face was so covered with blood and dust as to be quite
unrecognisable at first. John said not a word, but went down on his
knees and began carefully to wipe away the blood from her features, in
which act he was assisted by the drenching rain. Sad though his case
was, there was no one left to help him. The cries of the unfortunate
sufferers still unextricated, drew every one else away the moment the
poor woman had been released.

Ere long the whole scene of the catastrophe was brilliantly illuminated
by the numerous fires which were kindled out of the _debris_, to serve
as torches to those who laboured might and main for the deliverance of
the injured. Troops of people from the surrounding district quickly
made their appearance on the scene, and while some of these lent
effective aid in the work of rescue, others brought blankets, water, and
spirits, to cover and co