y will slow down until we get over it."

But the train was late and the locomotive's speed was not greatly
diminished. From the window John saw the line of trees marking the
ravine's sinuous course through the fields and told Dora that they would
soon be on the trestle. A moment later there was a shriek from the
locomotive, a violent jerking of the cars, a distant crashing and
grinding of timbers, and a thunderous sound of heavy bodies falling. The
coupling was broken and the chair-car lurched forward, left the track,
shot its front end against an embankment about twenty feet high and
remained poised there. Dora was thrown against a window, the thick glass
of which fortunately did not break, and John fell between the chairs to
the floor. Everywhere in the car the passengers lay over one another,
squirming and screaming in pain and terror.

"Are you hurt?" John asked Dora, as he struggled to his feet and bent
over her.

"No." She shook her head, her face blanched, her whole frame quivering.

"Come, let's get out!" he said. He offered to lift her in his arms, for
the floor of the car was sharply slanting to one side, but she refused
to permit it.

"Oh no. I can get out better by myself," she said, stepping from one
seat to another to accelerate their egress.

Some of the passengers around them were injured slightly, some had
fainted, and lay prone in the aisle, and these people blocked their
progress for a few moments. But when they had finally reached the open a
frightful sight met their view. At the bottom of the ravine which the
trestle had spanned lay an indiscriminate heap of splintered and
telescoped coaches which quite hid from view the locomotive lying
beneath. A violent hissing of steam came from the mass which all but
drowned out the cries of pain and terror from the imprisoned victims.
Now and then men or boys could be seen breaking through the car windows
and climbing down to the ground. But hundreds were out of sight. They
were doubtless stunned or killed outright.

Fifty or sixty people from the chair-car and the two connected
sleeping-coaches, which were the only parts of the train saved from the
ruin, gathered on the brink of the ravine and stood spellbound by the
sights they beheld in the smoking inferno beneath.

Suddenly a trainman near John raised a cry: "The cars are catching on
fire! They are dry as powder and will burn like oil! My God! there are
women and children down there!"

"Stay her