"Can't you speak, dear?" pleaded Sybil. "Oh, she is half killed with fright!" she added, turning to the stranger, and again the creeping thing was on her cheek, and Dorothy cried, sharply: "Blood! blood! Oh! Sybbie's hurt! Can't you help her?" And the match was out, and they were again in that hell of darkness and steam and gas and roar! But a calm and friendly voice came to them, saying: "Stay here; take part of these matches and light one now and then while I get out and find what can be done! Oh, here come the torches! Now we'll soon have help!" But before he left them he drew from a pocket a handkerchief, folded it, and swiftly tied it about Sybil's head, and even then the girl smiled at his naïve, lover-like excuse: "The blood frightens her so!" And through a few agonized minutes the girls clung tightly together, shivering in a very ague of terror. And then, through the billows of steam, the low-hanging, strangling clouds of smoke, they saw men with lanterns, heard orders, short and sharp, then their friend was lifting them down from the high, high step; and Sybil, with her arms about Dorothy, was aided, led, pushed, or pulled along at the will of the only person who noticed their presence or existence. There had been much noise--noise of voices, of metal ringing on metal, of hurrying feet--but suddenly it ceased. A moment's quiet came into that place of mad excitement. The crowd before them drew apart. Like lightning, their guide threw himself in front of the girls, whispering: "Don't look! Don't let her look!" And Sybil, with chilling blood, recalled that one piercing cry, that woman's cry, and to save her soul could not help sending a glance toward the four men who bore upon a stretcher a hastily covered form, so still, so pathetically slight! Covered? Yes, but one little foot in oxford-tie was exposed. A foot so like--so like-- And Sybil caught Dorothy in an embrace fierce enough to wring a cry from her, and the words: "What is it, dear? Are you hurt again? Have you turned your ankle, or-- Oh, Sybbie! It was that poor man! Oh, can't we get out? _Can't we?_" and her voice broke into frightened sobs. The other two exchanged meaning glances, for, as this outburst had been caused by the sight of two stalwart blue-coated men, who, after the manner of children "making a chair" were carrying on their crossed arms a passenger whose leg was broken, they trembled at the thought of the collapse that must surely have followed upon the sight of that frail, broken thing, whose mute authority had yet the power to silence the awful din.