"Oh, stop the train!" she cried, and her voice, with the whole power of her lungs, rang out far above the clatter of the wheels, wakening despairing echoes from the mountains impending on either side. The speed of the cars was perceptibly checked; the passengers saw the foam-flecked brute, with head stubbornly bent downward and eye of fire, pass beyond them. An instant later, to their horrified gaze and that of Graydon's, who was following as fast as a less swift horse could carry him, Madge and the locomotive appeared to come together. The young man gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry between a curse and a shout, and whipped his horse forward furiously. The speed of the train was renewed, and he saw through the open car that Madge must have passed unharmed before the engine, just grazing it. It also appeared that she was gaining the mastery, for her horse was rearing; then cars of ordinary make intervened and hid her from view a moment, and the train clattered noisily on. When he crossed the track Madge was not where he had last seen her. The road beyond ran at a greater distance from the railway, and was lined with trees and bushes. Through an opening among these he saw that the horse had resumed his old mad pace, that Madge was still mounted, but that she was no longer erect, and sat with her head bowed and her whip-hand clutching the mane. He also saw, with a sinking heart, that the road curved a little further on, and evidently crossed the track again. A moment later--Oh, horror! An opening in the foliage revealed Madge dashing headlong, apparently, into the train. He grew so faint that he almost fell from his horse, and was scarcely conscious, until, with a strong revulsion of hope, he found himself under the track which, about an eighth of a mile from the previous crossing, passes just above the roadway. Not aware of this fact, and with vision broken by intervening trees, he could not have imagined anything else than a collision, which must have been fatal in its consequences. With hope his pulse quickened, his strength returned, and he again urged his jaded horse forward, at the same time sending out his voice: "Madge, Madge, keep up a little longer." The road had left the car-track, the noise of the train was dying away in the distance. At last, turning a curve, he saw that Madge's horse had come down to a canter, and that she was pulling feebly at the rein. As he approached he shouted "Whoa!" with such a voice of command that the horse stopped suddenly and she almost fell forward. "Quick, Graydon, quick!" she gasped. He sprang to the ground, and a second later she was an unconscious burden in his arms. He laid her gently on a mossy bank under an oak; then, with a face fairly livid with passion, he drew a small revolver from his hip-pocket, stepped back to the horse that now stood trembling and exhausted in the road, and shot him dead.