There was nothing more to be said, and we bade them good-by, with no misgiving on our part, and stepped into the uncomfortable, stuffy immigrant cars. Mildred seated herself beside little Frau Kopp and held in her lap chubby two-year-old Hans, dressed like a little old man in the clumsy, German peasant fashion. Hélène and I meanwhile took turns in occupying the only vacant seat in the car. The motley crowd of Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Germans, and Bohemians, who for five or six days and nights had been traveling together in heat and discomfort, sat nodding sleepily and apparently unexcited at the near approach of their long journey’s end. All the afternoon it had looked lowering in the west, and as the dim kerosene lamps were lighted one by one, we heard the dash of rain upon the roof of the car, and by the flashes of lightning could discern with our faces pressed close to the panes that we were just entering upon the track of a storm. Trees were uprooted and lay in confusion beside the track. But we could see little, and I gave scarcely a thought to it as I sat on the hard, uncushioned seat, with my lap full of bags and wraps, and watched Mildred a few seats in front of me as she talked cheerily to the tired little children. Our destination was to be the little mining town of Blivens, and we were to reach it at half-past eight. On we went whizzing through the darkness, the train rocking from side to side, and the red-kerchiefed, brown faces of the women lighting up picturesquely the dark mysterious shadows. We were about to reach our destination, and I had just risen to rest my stiffened limbs, when suddenly I was thrown headlong down the aisle, and a hideous grating, jarring noise drowned every other sound. Then a sense of falling, rolling, pitching, of absolute darkness, and of frightful pain. I lay I know not how long. One foot and hand were pinioned under something hard and immovable, the other foot doubled under me, and my head twisted awry and also immovable. I was lying between two bodies, one above and one under me. Something warm was dripping down over my face, and shrieks and dying groans rent the air. I was too stunned at first to think what it meant. I was conscious only of pain, horrible pain, such as I had never dreamed of before. I could not cry out, I could not move. Oh, would help never come? What was this horrible thing that had happened? A moment ago—no, was it not an hour ago?—we were alive and well; and now? Oh, why had God let this horrible thing happen? And Mildred—where was she? Perhaps she was dead; and I should be dead too very soon, and nothing would matter much. I remember thinking then, strangely enough, “I am glad she has made her will.” Suddenly a dull glow, a gleam of light, then a hoarse yell of despair from a score of voices, “Da ist Feuer!” “_The train is on fire!_” My heart stopped beating. Were the horrors of a holocaust to be added to this agony?