He need not have spoken, however, for the people who had not already gotten out were close upon him. First in the rush was the mother of the babe that had screamed when the first jolts came. She was wild-eyed and hysterical. A piece of flying glass had struck her on the face, and the warm, trickling blood had frightened her. She rushed up to the nearest man and shouted, "Is my husband safe?" Just then a sickly, dudish little man, with a lighted cigar in his mouth, rushed toward her. "Ba Jove, my dear, you are 'urt," he said as she hurried toward him and fainted in his arms. The word had been passed around that a heavy freight was expected at any moment. The passenger whistle blew in long, shrill tones, while the brakeman hurried up the hill in the direction of the expected freight to give the danger signal. Hardly had he reached the top when there came the faint sound of a whistle. He heard the three blasts. The train had left Eastonville! Could he save a wreck? Lantern in hand, he hurried down the track as fast as he could with the wind and rain beating him back. Suddenly a black form loomed up in the mist ahead. Full blast she came, the black smoke from her stack running ahead as if to coax her on to greater speed. The brakeman waved his red lantern frantically in the air. There was a screeching sound of brake-shoes on the wheels, a long, shrill whistle, and the train sped past him, a misty dull serpent in the storm. He turned and followed as fast as he could. Women with disheveled hair stood and wrung their hands. Men cursed and swore as they ran back and forth about the derailed passenger. The wind lulled for a second, and in the momentary silence there came the half-smothered cry of a little child from one direction, answered from somewhere in the fog by the rushing of wheels and the faint, weird sigh of a whistle. Willis's head went up, his eyes flashed, his muscles tightened; then, turning to his mother, he cried, "The baby!" and in an instant was gone. It all happened so quickly there was no time for Mrs. Thornton to think. She saw Willis hasten away and enter the front door of the car they had been occupying; at the same instant she became aware of the approaching train. There was a shrill, angry hiss, and the freight swung into the cut with a terrible roar, then came a crashing of glass and breaking of timbers. The engineer had opened the whistle valve with such a jerk that it had stuck fast, and the whistle did its utmost. It was a doleful sound, pulsating its strange, sharp cry into the storm. Mrs. Thornton sank to her knees in an attitude of prayer, her head dropped to her breast. The mother that had fainted roused a little and called for her child.