. They were given the right of the road, and
Miles tested the speed of that mogul--proving that a pony truck would
stay on the track at fifty miles an hour, which a lot of us "cranks" had
disputed.

A few miles out there is a coaling-station, and at that time they were
building the chutes. One of the iron drop-aprons fell just before Miles
with the mogul got to it; it smashed the headlight, dented the stack,
ripped up the casing of the sand-box and dome, cut a slit in the jacket
the length of the boiler, tore off the cab, struck the end of the first
car, and then tore itself loose, and fell to the ground.

The throttle was knocked wide open, and the mogul was flying. Miles was
thrown down, his head cut open by a splinter, and his foot pretty badly
hurt. He picked himself up instantly, and took a look back as he closed
the throttle. Everything was "coming" all right, he remembered the
emergency of the case, and opened the throttle again. A hasty
inspection showed the engine in condition to run--she only looked
crippled. Miles had to stand up. His foot felt numb and weak, so he
rested his weight on the other foot. He was afraid he would fall off if
he became faint, and he had Dennis take off the bell-cord and tie it
around his waist, throwing a loop over the reverse lever, as a measure
of safety. The right side of the cab and all the roof were gone, so that
Miles was in plain sight. The cut in his scalp bled profusely, and in
trying to wipe the blood from his eyes, he merely spread it all over
himself, so that he looked as if he had been half murdered.

It was this apparition of wreck, ruin, and concentrated energy that
Marie Venot saw flash past her father's door, hastening to the relief of
the victims of a worse disaster, forty miles away.

Her father came home for his dinner in a few minutes from his little
office in the depot. To his daughter's eager inquiry he said there had
been some big accident in town and the "extra" was carrying doctors
from up the road. But what was the matter with the engine, he didn't
know; it was the 170; so it was old man Alexander, he said--and that's
the nearest I ever came to being a hero.

Marie knew who was running the 170 pretty well; so after dinner she went
to the telegraph office for information, and there she learned that the
special had struck the new coal chute at Coalton and that the engineer
was hurt. It was time she ran down to see Mrs. Alexander, she said, and
that afte