id="Page_50" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[50]"/> 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 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, exactly where it needs must lie to give the warning through the crushing wheel.

"I STUMP YE!"

"THE STRONG, BLACK FIST WAS CLINCHED."

Now for the second time the old man and the locomotive regarded each other. Her fiery breath was close upon him. Above the uproar of the reeling earth the shriek of the train sounded in his deafened ears. Once again, the strong, black fist was clinched in the approaching monster's face.

"I dare ye!" he cried. "Come on! I dare ye!" He pulled himself up with a mighty wrench. But the unknown power held him. He felt the claws of the cow-catcher. He gave one low cry:

"Lord, I'd like to got dar an' seen Juno Soo afore she died—"

Then he closed his eyes, that he might not see what would happen, clasped his hands above his gray head, and gave his manly soul to God.

"HE LAID ONE TORPEDO ON EACH RAIL."

IV.

"Who did it?" swept from lip to lip. No one was in sight.

"I thought we hit a man," said the engineer, swinging his lantern far out into the darkness. But no sign, whether of the dead or of the living, was in sight,—nothing except a half-starved, collarless dog, who sat stupidly upon the grass, and who did not even wag his tail when the stoker spoke to him.

"Who saved us? Who saved the train?"

Ask the disappointed vulture and the mouth of the muttering earth to tell you, gentlemen passengers! There is no other lip to answer.

Yes, there is one; a little, trembling, ashy lip—a child's—scarcely able to articulate for grief or terror, and pouring forth confused cries that nobody can understand. The passengers have left the train, and are making their way cautiously homeward down the devastated road-bed, where the track had lain. It is hurled now to every point of the compass in the wild night.

"PAPÄ! PAPÄ!"

They come to a halt suddenly, before a little huddling figure, with its face hidden in its arms, crouched beside a crooked rail. An old horse, with traces hanging and harness a wreck, stands snorting beside the boy.

"Donny! Donny! Why, my sonny boy!"

The crowd parts for a thin, white-faced man,—the passenger who had been heard to say upon the way, "My little son is coming to meet me. I hope these shocks do not extend to the Summerville station."

There is one other little wild call, "Papä! Papä!"—a tremendous effort to be manly, and not cry before strangers—and the boy melts into his father's arms, and wonders whose tears they are which rain upon his cuddling face.

But who saved the train? Where is he? How did he do it? Who took that noble risk? Where is the hero? Here?

"You, my lad?"

Then Donny raised his awestruck face from his father's quick-beating heart, and standing among the strangers and the neighbors, told the story,—all that he knew; all that he could tell.

"A LITTLE HUDDLING FIGURE."

"I only remembered the torpedoes, sir. The old man did the rest."

"What old man? Where is he?"

"Why, the old colored man! Haven't you seen him? The old colored man who ran ahead and put them on the track. He saved the train."

The engineer took his lantern and silently went back and swung the spot of fire in the black, cold air. It had not rained, as we have said, for many weeks, but his feet splashed into deep pools and running rivulets, and sank into crevices and gashes in the trembling earth.

A few of the passengers followed the engineer. The locality where the train stood was examined thoroughly. Again, the same result,—no human creature, dead or living, was to be seen. The pauper dog sat just where they had left him. The engineer went up and patted him. At the touch he fell over—dead of fright.

They returned to report what they had found. As they did so, they called and shouted into the darkness, seeking for the brave life that had saved their own. Only the roar of the earthquake answered them.