efore they were lucky enough to spy a
hand-car, standing beside the track. Here was a gleam of
hope. In a minute or two they had lifted it upon the rails.
Springing within it, they applied themselves to the levers,
and away they went at a more promising rate of speed.

For a mile or two all went on swimmingly. Then sudden
disaster came. The car struck a broken rail and was hurled
headlong from the track, sending its occupants flying into
the muddy roadside ditch. This was enough to discourage
anybody with less go in him than Conductor Fuller. But in a
moment he was on his feet, trying his limbs. No bones were
broken. A mud-bath was the full measure of his misfortune.
Murphy was equally sound. The car was none the worse. With
scarce a minute's delay they sprang to it, righted it, and
with some strong tugging lifted it upon the track. With very
few minutes' delay they were away again, somewhat more
cautiously than before, and sharply on the lookout for
further gifts of broken rails from the runaways ahead.

Leaving the pair of pursuers to their seemingly hopeless
task, we must return to the score of locomotive pirates.
These men who had done such strange work at Big Shanty were
by no means what they seemed. They were clad in the
butternut gray and the slouch hats of the Confederacy, but
their ordinary attire was the blue uniform of the Union
army. They were, in truth, a party of daring scouts, who had
stealthily made their way south in disguise, their purpose
being to steal a train, burn the bridges behind them as they
fled, and thus make useless for a time the only railroad by
which the Confederate authorities could send troops to
Chattanooga, then threatened by the Union forces under
General Mitchel.

They had been remarkably successful, as we have seen, at the
beginning of their enterprise. Making their way, by devious
routes, to Marietta, they had gathered at that place,
boarded a train, and started north. The rush of passengers
and trainmen into the refreshment-room at Big Shanty had
been calculated upon. The presence of a Confederate camp at
that out-of-the-way station had not been. It might have
proved fatal to their enterprise but for the stolid
stupidity of the sentinel. But that peril had been met and
passed. They were safely away. Exhilaration filled their
souls. All was safe behind; all seemed safe ahead.

True, there was one peril close at hand. Beside the track
ran that slender wire, a resting-plac