lysed them.

"I had wondered how the train running at a great speed would take the
pit into which I had guided it, and I was much interested in watching
it. One of my colleagues thought that it would actually jump it, and
indeed it was not very far from doing so. Fortunately, however, it fell
short, and the buffers of the engine struck the other lip of the shaft
with a tremendous crash. The funnel flew off into the air. The
tender, carriages, and van were all smashed up into one jumble, which,
with the remains of the engine, choked for a minute or so the mouth of
the pit. Then something gave way in the middle, and the whole mass of
green iron, smoking coals, brass fittings, wheels, wood-work, and
cushions all crumbled together and crashed down into the mine. We
heard the rattle, rattle, rattle, as the debris struck against the
walls, and then, quite a long time afterwards, there came a deep roar
as the remains of the train struck the bottom. The boiler may have
burst, for a sharp crash came after the roar, and then a dense cloud of
steam and smoke swirled up out of the black depths, falling in a spray
as thick as rain all round us. Then the vapour shredded off into thin
wisps, which floated away in the summer sunshine, and all was quiet
again in the Heartsease mine.

"And now, having carried out our plans so successfully, it only
remained to leave no trace behind us. Our little band of workers at
the other end had already ripped up the rails and disconnected the side
line, replacing everything as it had been before. We were equally busy
at the mine. The funnel and other fragments were thrown in, the shaft
was planked over as it used to be, and the lines which led to it were
torn up and taken away. Then, without flurry, but without delay, we
all made our way out of the country, most of us to Paris, my English
colleague to Manchester, and McPherson to Southampton, whence he
emigrated to America. Let the English papers of that date tell how
throughly we had done our work, and how completely we had thrown the
cleverest of their detectives off our track.

"You will remember that Gomez threw his bag of papers out of the
window, and I need not say that I secured that bag and brought them to
my employers. It may interest my employers now, however, to learn that
out of that bag I took one or two little papers as a souvenir of the
occasion. I have no wish to publish these papers; but, still, it is
every man for h