eemed scarcely
damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which
happily I had abandoned at Sittingbourne, was smashed out of
resemblance to a coach. The third one, from which I had just emerged,
looked fairly healthy, and the remaining three had not even left the
rails.

All ran to the smashed coach.

"There were two passengers in that coach," said the guard, who, having
been at the rear of the train, was unharmed.

"Are you counting me?" I asked. "Because I changed carriages at
Sittingbourne."

"Praise God for that, sir!" he answered. "There's only one, then--a
tall, severe-looking gent--in the first-class compartment."

Was it joy or sorrow that I felt at the thought of that man buried
somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not
unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation
at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my
peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive
foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and thwart and
blast my own.

The men hammered and heaved and chopped and sawed, and while they were
in the midst of the work some one took me by the sleeve and asked me
to go and attend to the engine-driver and stoker, who were being
carried into a waiting-room at the station. It is symptomatic of the
extraordinary confusion which reigns in these affairs that till that
moment the question of the fate of the men in charge of the train had
not even entered my mind, though I had of course noticed that the
engine was overturned. In the waiting-room it was discovered that two
local doctors had already arrived. I preferred to leave the
engine-driver to them. He was unconscious as he lay on a table. The
stoker, by his side, kept murmuring in a sort of delirium:

"Bill, 'e was all dazed like--'e was all dazed like. I told him the
signal wasn't off. I shouted to him. But 'e was all dazed like."

I returned to the train full of a horrible desire to see with my own
eyes a certain corpse. Bit by bit the breakdown gang had removed the
whole of the centre part of the shattered carriage. I thrust myself
into the group, and--we all looked at each other. Nobody, alive or
dead, was to be found.

"He, too, must have got out at Sittingbourne," I said at length.

"Ay!" said the guard.

My heard swam, dizzy with dark imaginings and unspeakable suspicions.
"He has escaped; he is alive!" I muttered sava