ing of the brakes on the wheels, a rapid slowing of the train,
and a slight shock at stopping.

The party of girls had grown silent, and their eyes were wide and
their faces blanched with fear.

The men in the car arose from their seats and went out to discover the
cause of the alarm. Ralph went also. The train had narrowly escaped
plunging into a mass of wrecked coal cars, thrown together by a
collision which had just occurred, and half buried in the scattered
coal.

To make the matter still worse the collision had taken place in a deep
and narrow cut, and had filled it from side to side with twisted and
splintered wreckage.

What was to be done? the passengers asked. The conductor replied
that a man would be sent back to the next station, a few miles away,
to telegraph for a special train from Wilkesbarre, and that the
passengers would take the train from the other side of the wreck. And
how long would they be obliged to wait here?

"Well, an hour at any rate, perhaps longer."

"That means two hours," said an impatient traveller, bitterly.

Ralph heard it all. An hour would make him very late, two hours would
be fatal to his mission. He went up to the conductor and asked,--

"How long'd it take to walk to Wilkesbarre?"

"That depends on how fast you can walk, sonny. Some men might do it in
half or three quarters of an hour: you couldn't." And the man looked
down, slightingly, on the boyish figure beside him.

Ralph turned away in deep thought. If he could walk it in
three-quarters of an hour, he might yet be in time; time to do
something at least. Should he try?

But this accident, this delay, might it not be providential? Must he
always be striving against fate? against every circumstance that would
tend to relieve him? against every obstacle thrown into his path to
prevent him from bringing calamity on his own head? Must he?--but the
query went no further. The angel with the flaming sword came back to
guard the gates of thought, and conscience still was king. He would do
all that lay in his human power, with every moment and every muscle
that he had, to fulfil the stern command of duty, and then if he
should fail, it would be with no shame in his heart, no blot upon his
soul.

Already he was making his way through the thick underbrush along the
steep hill-side above the wreck, stumbling, falling, bruising his
hands and knees, and finally leaping down into the railroad track on
the other side of the p