oed back from the other side."

"Nonsense, Miss Renwick! There's no train either way for two hours yet."

But she had begun to edge her way back toward the platform, and he could
not but follow. Looking across the intervening space,--a rocky hollow
twenty feet in depth,--he could see that the captain had reached the
platform and was seeking for a good place to step up; then that he
lifted his right foot and placed it on the planking and with his cane
and the stiff and wounded left leg strove to push himself on. Had there
been a hand to help him, all would have been easy enough; but there was
none, and the plan would not work. Absorbed in his efforts, he could not
see Stuart; he did not see that Miss Renwick had left her companions and
was retracing her steps to get back to the platform. He heard a sudden
dull roar from the rocks across the stream; then a sharp, shrill whistle
just around the bluff. My God! a train, and that man there, alone,
helpless, deserted! Stuart gave a shout of agony: "Back! Roll back over
the bank!" Armitage glanced around; determined; gave one mighty effort;
the iron-ferruled stick slipped on the icy track, and down he went,
prone between the glistening rails, even as the black vomiting monster
came thundering round the bend. He had struck his head upon the iron,
and was stunned, not senseless, but scrambled to his hands and knees and
strove to crawl away. Even as he did so he heard a shriek of anguish in
his ears, and with one wild leap Alice Renwick came flying from the
platform in the very face of advancing death, and the next instant, her
arm clasped about his neck, his strong arms tightly clasping _her_,
they were lying side by side, bruised, stunned, but safe, in a welcoming
snow-drift half-way down the hither bank.

When Stuart reached the scene, as soon as the engine and some
wrecking-cars had thundered by, he looked down upon a picture that
dispelled any lingering doubt in his mind. Armitage, clasping Queen
Alice to his heart, was half rising from the blessed mantlet of the
snow, and she, her head upon his broad shoulder, was smiling faintly up
into his face: then the glorious eyes closed in a death-like swoon.

* * * * *

Fort Sibley had its share of sensations that eventful year. Its crowning
triumph in the one that followed was the wedding in the early spring. Of
all the lovely women there assembled, the bride by common consent stood
unrivalled,--Qu