was said they did all that awful night.
Again, the whistle of the train--near now--nearer--

[Illustration: "THE LITTLE ONE CLIMBED LIKE A MONKEY UPON A SHELF."]

As the pathetic couple ran up the torn and twisted track, Donny began to
sob aloud; but all he said was, "Papae! Papae! Papae!"

"Gib 'em to me, sonny," said the Negro, with the authority of age and
danger. "I kin run faster'n you, honey! Goramercy, _dar she am_!"

[Illustration: "THE OLD MAN SEIZED THE TORPEDOES."]

The old man seized the torpedoes, and rushing away with them, vanished
in the darkness. The unknown, collarless dog followed him. Donny,
sobbing and calling his father's name, pushed on as well as he could by
himself. As he ran he tried to say his prayers, but all he could
remember was, "Our Father who art in heaven."

[Illustration: "THIS COMFORTED THE LAD INCREDIBLY."]

Then he thought, how soon might his father on earth be father in
heaven, too? He could not say that prayer. The boy, like many an older
and wiser than Donny, only cried instead of praying. As he ran along in
this sad fashion, something hit against him, whinnying in the dark. It
was Ben Bow, the horse he had ridden ever since he was a baby. Now, this
comforted the lad incredibly, to have one of the family with him.

III.

THE old man and the train were now face to face. The locomotive came
cautiously, for the shocks had penetrated far up the road, but too
fast--far too fast. Where the track had gone to pieces, a mass of
twisted rails and tossing sleepers and furrowed earth, a bank--what is
called a high bank in Southern topography--raised itself just in the
turn of time to have sent the derailed train plunging down.

The old Negro watched the approaching flare of the head-light as he ran
on, with a grim, defiant eye.

"I stump ye!" he said aloud. He shook his trembling, black fist at the
locomotive. Stumbling along, his old bundle over one shoulder, and the
torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered--for it did
not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor--he
tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,--in a twisted
tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth.

When he tried to rise, something held the hero down. He reached his
whole length forward flat upon the road-bed, and with great precision
and with a coolness that one cannot think of now without emotion, he
laid one torpedo on each rail, exac