tch were not more than a minute slow.

At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of
the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He
was still a quarter of a mile from the station.

Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening
his pace to a sharp run.

He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an
unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of
human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails--all were mingled
together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.

Hugh Ritson ran faster.

Then he saw haggard men and women appearing and disappearing before him
in the light of a fire that panted on the ground like an overthrown
horse.

The north train had been wrecked.

Within a dozen yards from the station the engine and three of the front
carriages had broken from their couplings and plunged on to the bank.
The last four carriages, free of the fatal chain, had kept the rails and
were standing unharmed above.

Women who had been dragged through the tops of the overturned carriages
fled away with white faces into the darkness of the fields. Men, too,
with panic-stricken eyes, sat down on the grass, helpless and useless.
Some resolute souls, roused to activity, were pulling at the carriages
to set them right. Men from the station came with lanterns, and rescued
the injured, and put them to lie out of harm's way.

The scene was harrowing, and only two of its incidents are material to
this history. Over all the rest, the clamor, the tumult, the agony, the
abject fear, and the noble courage, let a veil be drawn.

Fate had brought together, in that hour of disaster, three men whose
lives, hitherto apart, were henceforth to be bound up as one life for
good or ill.

Hugh Ritson rushed here and there like a man distraught. He peered into
every face. He caught up a lantern that some one had set down, and ran
to and fro in the darkness, stooping to let the light fall on those on
the ground, holding up the red glare to the windows of the uninjured
carriages.

At that moment all his frozen soul seemed to melt. Face to face with the
pitiless work of destiny, his own heartless schemes disappeared. At last
he saw the face he looked for. Then he dropped the lantern to his side,
and turned the glass of it from him.

"Stay here, Greta," said a voice he knew. "I shall be back with you