izing cry she drops twenty feet upon the jagged
rocks below. Her head strikes a rock and she lies motionless.

Several minutes pass; then she regains consciousness. On attempting to
rise she finds that her ankle is sprained. Despite the agony it causes
her, the brave woman struggles to climb back to the track. It is now
quite dark and she realizes that the train must be along in a few
minutes. She cannot reach the station. But she may yet stop the train at
the culvert bridge.

A long shrill whistle sounds. It is the familiar signal of the Keystone
Express.

Regardless of the acute pain which every step causes her, the widow
scrambles over the rocks.

As she reaches the roadbed the express rumbles over the trestle. With a
cry of despair she sinks to the ground.

Sister Martha is acting her role of heroine at a point a mile and a half
further up the grade. She has posted herself where she can observe the
station and the summit of the grade.

At the side of the track she collects a dozen boulders, the heaviest she
can move. These she determines to put on the track to derail the car
which the miners are to send down the grade to wreck the train.

"Will the widow Braun stop the express?" Martha asks herself again and
again, as the terrible minutes of suspense pass. "Perhaps I should have
gone down the track instead of sending her."

Through the darkness a glimmer of light shines from the summit of the
mountain.

"The miners are in readiness. What shall I do?"

For an answer, the whistle of the train falls upon her ears.

She hesitates, then with an energy born of desperation she begins to
pile the rocks on the track. The ragged edges cut her tender fingers.
She works on unmindful of cuts and bruises.

Higher and higher the pyramid rises.

Only once does she glance down the track to see the train. Its great
headlight looks like a beacon. It is approaching nearer and nearer.

"Have they started the car?" Martha wonders. She can hear the rumble of
the train, but not a sound from the road above.

"The train will reach this spot first," she cries aloud. "The miners are
waiting for it to get nearer to them."

Acting upon a sudden impulse, she runs up the track a distance of a
hundred yards. There are rocks lying on the side of the track nearest
the mountain.

One, two, three big rocks she places on the track.

A faint cheer reaches her.

"They have started the car," she laughs hysterically.

"It will not