Go on! go on!"

"I tried to wrench myself free, but it was impossible; they had tied the
knots well, and I began to believe I was doomed. The rail sang beneath
my head, and I knew the express was approaching at terrible speed."

"This is too much--too much!" groaned the little man, flopping down on a
chair. "It actually overcomes me!"

"I fully expected the express would come over me," the boy went on. "I
gave up hope. Looking along the track, I saw the engine swoop into view
round a curve in the road. Down upon me with the speed of the wind it
swept."

No sound but a groan came from the lips of Professor Scotch.

"Staring with horrified eyes and benumbed senses at the engine, I heard
it shriek a wild note of warning. I had been seen! But the train was on
a down grade, and it could not stop in time. I was doomed just the
same."

The professor was ready to fall off his chair.

"Then," cried Frank, dramatically, "out along the side of the engine
crept a boy, who carried something in his hand. That boy was Walter
Clyde, to whom I owe my very life. The something he carried in his hand
was a lasso, and with that he saved me."

"How--how could he do it?" palpitated the professor. "You were tied to
the track!"

"Yes, but Walter Clyde is an ingenious fellow, and he saw how to get
around that difficulty."

"But how--how?"

"Well, close beside the railroad was the stump of a great tree that had
been cut down. I saw him point at it, and above the roar of the train I
heard him shriek for me to lift my head and look at it."

"Yes, yes! Go on!"

"I saw him whirling the lasso-noose about his head, making ready for the
cast, having first hitched the other ends to the cow-catcher of the
locomotive."

"Well, well?"

"I lifted my head as high as possible, and I saw the noose shoot through
the air. Excuse me while I shudder a few seconds!"

"Did he drag you from the track in time?" shouted the professor. "Did
the noose fall over your head?"

"No," answered Frank; "but it fell over that stump, and, when the
express reached the end of the lariat, having come so near that the nose
of the pilot brushed my hair, the lariat brought up. It was a good stout
rope, and it yanked that engine off the track in a second, and piled the
entire train in the ditch. I was saved--saved by a brave boy, and only
forty of the passengers on the train were killed."

Professor Scotch gasped for breath and sank from his chair to the
floor.