f light on the track ahead, and leaned forward as if to
help the engine go faster. He did not speak, while the train rushed
through the night.

So the second of Robert Hardy's seven days drew to a close.

WEDNESDAY--THE THIRD DAY.

As the engine drew near the scene of the wreck a great crowd could be
seen standing about the track. Before the train came to a stop Robert
Hardy leaped down from the cab and struggled forward, uttering cries of
which he himself probably was not conscious. The accident had occurred
upon a bridge which spanned a small river in the vicinity of Baldwin,
near which town Mr. Hardy's brother lived.

The engine, mail car, two day-coaches, and two sleepers had crashed
through, and falling a distance of fifty feet, had partly broken
through the ice of the frozen stream. To add to the horror of the
disaster, the two sleepers had caught fire, and there was absolutely no
means to fight the flames. Mr. Hardy caught confused glimpses of men
down on the ice throwing handfuls of snow upon the blazing timbers in a
frantic attempt to drive back or put out the flames. He fell, rather
than scrambled, down the steep, slippery bank of the stream, and then
the full horror of the situation burst upon him.

The baggage car and tender had fallen in such a way that the trucks
rested upright on the ice, and the position of the timbers was
relatively that of the train before it had left the track. One
day-coach lay upon its side, but had broken completely in two, as if
some giant hand had pulled it apart, leaving the ragged ends of timbers
projecting toward one another in such curious fashion that if the two
ends of the car had been pushed together the splintered beams would
have fitted into place almost as if made on a pattern. The other
day-coach had fallen upon one end, and one-third of it was under water.
The other end resting partly against the broken car, stuck up in the
air like some curious, fantastic pillar or leaning tower.

Mr. Hardy was conscious of all this and more as he heard the groans of
the injured and the cries of those begging to be released from the
timbers under which they had been caught. But his own children! Never
had he loved them as now.

The crowd of people had increased to a mob. The confusion was that of
terror. Mr. Hardy rushed about the wreck searching for his children, a
great throbbing at his heart as he thought of their probable fate, when
the sweetest of all s