the train and Fate were running her
down. With intuitive resistance and a defiant sweep of her body she
turned toward it and screamed aloud.

The photographer could not credit this rapid change to himself when he
saw upon the track a small rough cart drawn by Mallston's oldest girl
and containing his youngest stretched upon a dirty pillow. The express
was coming down-grade at full speed, but at its whistle the oldest child
turned off the track and tried to drag her burden across the rail. The
cart upset, and the baby sprawled, crying, between the rails, while his
sister fled crying toward home.

This whole occurrence was a flash: it seemed to the spectators they had
barely started forward with their blood curdling, the engine had but
screamed, and Mallston was merely seen dropping a basket of potatoes and
leaping with upright hair and starting eyes, before the whole thing was
over. The train stopped with such a recoil that many passengers were
thrown from their seats: the engineer dropped from his cab, and there
was a crowd.

Mallston was jammed into a heap against a tall board fence which
surrounded the store-lot. The baby sprawled near him, where he had
thrown it when the engine struck him.

"Are you hurt?" asked the photographer, turning him over.

He sat up, looking dazed and ludicrous: "Wher's the little feller?"

"I got him," panted the breathless mother, shaking the child from side
to side as she showed it to him.

"_He's_ all right," cried the engineer, "but I hit you. Where are you
hurt?"

"I ain't hurt no place," said Mallston, crawling up on all fours, "'cept
wher' my back and head hit the fence." He stood up grinning at the
excited crowd, and put his sneaking, protecting fingertips under the
baby's chin. The youngest had ceased to yell during the fright, but this
touched him off again.

"You skeered the poor little feller," said Mallston severely, but the
engineer was already mounting his cab, laughing with relief. The train
passed on, people crowding the platforms.

Women felt the baby's limbs: there were no hurts except a bruise on one
fat leg and a little more than the usual amount of dirt on its face.

"Are you sure you aren't injured?" urged the photographer, shaking his
man.

But Mallston looked into his eyes with a preoccupied mind, and said, as
to the only person present who would appreciate the depth of the remark,
"I couldn't a-stood that, by jeeminy!" Tears stood in his big bovine