re likely many more.
She had heard the foreman say his section was about nine miles long,
but she was ignorant as to how much of it lay west of the shanty. She
hoped devoutly that the station was not too far away. Time was
precious. Time was everything.

The night had grown cloudy and dark. She could not see more than a few
feet away; but that was nothing. All she had to do was to keep on
walking as fast as she could until she got to the next station up the
line. After that she merely had to sit down at a table in the
station-agent's room and write up the whole story for her paper. The
operator and the _Recorder_ would do the rest. She would send a flash
wire to notify Brennon, the night editor, what to expect and she would
send a special message to McAllister that would send him jumping for
the Chief of Police.

The _Recorder_ was a morning paper. It did not go to press until about
four a.m., and they could hold it beyond that hour if necessary. That
part of it was all right if they could only get the police into action
in time to catch the scoundrels who were plotting at Waring's house.
If all went well she might expect to reach the wire by midnight. They
would have her story in type in plenty of time if there was no wire
trouble. That was a chance which she would have to take. It might be,
of course, that Nickleby and Rives had acted already; but hardly
likely, she thought.

She could not afford to fail. She MUST not fail! There was no use in
trying to rake up obstacles until she came to them. All sorts of
possibilities for failure at the Toronto end occurred to her; but she
shut her lips tight together and thrust these doubts aside angrily.

Just then she tripped on a cross-tie, stumbled and fell. Her heart
leaped in fright at thought of the ankle and she tested it anxiously;
but it seemed all right. She would have to pay more attention to her
feet. Here now she had gone and skinned the palm of her hand for
nothing and lost two doughnuts out of her waist! There was comfort in
the knowledge that there were no cattleguards to tumble into in this
lonesome stretch of wild Algoma.

She hurried on, straining her eyes at the barrier of gloom that rose a
few yards ahead. And out of it kept springing faint grotesque shapes
that changed themselves slowly, resolving into dim rocks and bushes,
telegraph poles and high embankments, finally melting away behind her
and losing their identity in the gloom