direct
route. This involved crossing a part of the line where there were
several sidings and branch lines, on which a good deal of pushing of
trucks and carriages to and fro--that is "shunting"--was going on.

Like a reckless warrior, who by a bold and sudden push sometimes gains
single-handed the centre of an enemy's position before he is discovered
and assailed on every side, straight forward Mrs Durby ran into the
very midst of a brisk traffic, before any one discovered her. Suddenly
a passenger-train came up with the usual caution in such circumstances,
nevertheless at a smart rattling pace, for "usual caution" does not take
into account or provide for the apparition of stout elderly females on
the line. The driver of the passenger engine saw her, shut off steam,
shouted, applied the brakes and whistled furiously.

We have already hinted that the weather was not fine. Mrs Durby's
umbrella being up, hid the approaching train. As for screaming
steam-whistles, the worthy woman had come to regard intermittent
whistling as a normal condition of railways, which, like the crying of
cross babies, meant little or nothing, and had only to be endured. She
paid no attention to the alarm. In despair the driver reversed his
engine; fire flew from the wheels, and the engine was brought to a
stand, but not until the buffers were within three feet of the nurse's
shoulder. At that moment she became aware of her danger, uttered a
shriek, as we have said, that would have done credit to the whistle of a
small engine, and, bending her head with her umbrella before her, rushed
frantically away on another line of rails. She did not observe, poor
soul, that a goods train was coming straight down that line towards
her,--partly because her mental vision was turned in terror to the rear,
and partly because the umbrella obscured all in advance. In vain the
driver of the goods engine repeated the warnings and actions of the
passenger engine. His had more speed on and was heavier; besides, Mrs
Durby charged it at the rate of full five miles an hour, with the
umbrella steadily in front, and a brown paper parcel swinging wildly on
her arm, as if her sole desire on earth was to meet that goods engine in
single combat and beat out its brains at the first blow. Certain it is
that Mrs Durby's career would have been cut short then and there, if
tall Joe Turner, the guard, had not been standing at the tail of his own
train and observed her d