railroad, to avoid the grade, followed the course of the Coponie, and circled about to the northward. Rollins had only to ride four miles to the ore-cars eleven—but such a night for coasting!

The rain made it hard for him to follow the little circle of light that his lantern threw before him as he scorched along the level stretch.

Before he reached the hill-top it seemed to him that he was standing still, and the road coming up at him like the surface of a great wheel.

At last, he felt that he had reached down-grade. How he longed now for the brake that he had so disdained! He determined to keep his feet going as long as he safely could, and he back-pedalled gently to keep them in place.

Thud! he struck the first water-bar, and his cap came forward over his eyes. He threw it off with a backward toss of his head.

Another jolt! He was too much in the middle of the road. He must keep more to the left. He was flying now. The rain poured down his face and stung him in a thousand prickling points.

The wind roared frightfully in his ears, and he straightened up as far as his crooked racing-handles would allow. He was at the first turn. He swirled about it, and his feet came off the ratchets. He lifted up his knees, and placed his legs on the rests. He was riding a runaway.

"Hard to the left!" he kept saying to himself, with his arms braced straight like iron rods. The front wheel wriggled, and he knew he had struck the bit of sandy road above the second angle, and the worst. It warned him just in time. He remembered the huge rock with the advertisements on it, and a ray from the lantern caught it as he flashed by and then swooped off to the right. A sharp jingle as a stone flew up against the spokes; he was once more in the straight shoot for the last turn of all.

With wide-staring eyes he prayed; his tongue formed the words behind his closely shut teeth. "Bear to the left now!" He knew the path was better on that side.

Again the front wheel wriggled fiercely. It was by nothing but luck this time that he had chosen the right moment. There was a hollow thump as he crossed a wooden culvert and bounded for a moment clear into the air. The greatest danger was passed. Below him stretched a straight decline, and then the sandy patch before he reached the crossing.

How could he stop? He could never catch those flying pedals. But stop he must or he would overshoot his mark a half-mile before he found the level.

It was no easy thing to do to hold that struggling front wheel steady. He straightened up, and bending his right knee, placed the sole of his foot against the tire of the front wheel. He could feel it warming through the leather, but he had partly checked the speed. Then there was a ringing sound, a twist of both his arms, and over he went with a sickening momentary cry of fear.

He rolled up on his hands and knees. To save his life he could not help that choking, whimpering sound. His mouth was full of sand, and he felt as though his breast had been crushed in against his lungs. A sharp pain ran through his left leg; but at last he caught his breath.

There was the track within thirty feet of where he had fallen. He could only tell this by seeing the ghostlike danger-post that stretched above the roadway like a white warning gallows. There, a few rods down the track, was the switch that turned through the sharp cut to the quarries.

Rollins gave a cry. "The key!" The switch was locked. Would he have to stand there and see the ore-cars rush by him? He twisted with both hands at the guard chain to the lock. It wouldn't move. But what was that standing close on the siding?

A hand-car is a good lift for two men at any time, but it seemed as if made of pine wood instead of heavy iron wheels and bars. He rolled it to the track, and up-ended it as easily as a laborer would throw over a wheel-barrow.

Then he heard a roaring sound above him along the grade. The sharp staccato tooting of the drilling engine he heard also. Then far below him, four miles away, the long confident whistle of No. 44 at a grade crossing. The rails were slippery, and he knew that the train was coming slowly up the grade. As the hand-car toppled across the track he threw upon the heap two heavy ties, and scrambled up the opposite bank. Now the roaring was upon him! Crash! A snap and a whirl, and the wheels of the foremost ore-car caught the obstruction. The load piled forward, and the flats behind reared up and threw their heavy freight in all directions. He had wrecked her just in time.

He hurried back to the crossing. A tangle of wire and frame-work, the bicycle lay at the road-side. He must have missed striking that huge rock by nothing short of a miracle. The lamp, twisted and broken, was attached to the front fork. He could smell the oil, and he sopped it with his handkerchief. His hands were sticky, and the match refused to light. At last he struck a handful of them; they flashed feebly, then sputtered and went out. In the brief space Rollins had seen that his hands were dripping red.

A great white eye and the tinkling of the rails told that the little switch engine would strike the obstruction first.

It was alongside now! The young man saw that the wheels were reversing furiously. Then he heard a second crash and a screeching, long continued, that went through and through his dizzy brain.

"Safe! safe!" he said, and fell limp in the sand.

"Are you hurted, Bill, lad?" said the engineer of the switch engine, rubbing his bruised sides and letting up for a minute his pull on the whistle rope. "Them ore-cars jumped the track."

"No; all O K," came the answer from the opposite side of the cab. "Jest bumped a bit. Listen! There's old Jack whistling for brakes."

The shrieking of the switch engine was warning No. 44 in time. They could make-out her head-light through the leaves of the trees just at the tangent of the curve a quarter of a mile below. Some figures were running up the track, for they could see a lantern bobbing up and down, and soon the voices were quite close.

"What has happened here?" inquired a man with brass buttons, as he caught a glimpse of the engineer swinging himself painfully off the step to the ground behind the wreckage.

"The Lord's finger, I reckon," said the engineer. "I swear I saw a light!" and in a few words he told the story.