At the time of the events here recorded, two rival railroad corporations had become suddenly aware of the value of Pickett’s Gap as an outlet from the anthracite coal fields easterly to the Delaware river and to tidewater. Not that the project of building a railroad across that section of country was by any means a new one. On the contrary, it had been talked of for years. Indeed, a survey had once been made to within a mile of the mouth of the gap, but the stakes had rotted away or been destroyed long before. It was due to a combination of certain great railroad and coal interests that the subject had been now revived. And the engineers, looking over the ground, became suddenly impressed with the importance of securing the Pickett’s Gap route. From that moment it was a race between the Delaware Valley and Eastern Railroad Company and the Tidewater and Western Railroad Company to secure the right of way through Pickett’s Gap. This gorge, the only opening for fifteen miles through the ridge that flanked the westerly shore of the Delaware, became thenceforth the objective point toward which the engineers of both railroad companies bent all their energies. The D. V. & E. worked up toward it from the Delaware and the east; while the T. & W. came down the country from the west, adopting, unknown to its rival, the old survey of former years. From information received at the office of the T. & W. it was known that Nicholson, the D. V. & E. engineer, was, on a certain day in September, working up from the shore of the Delaware toward the mouth of the gorge, and that, in all probability, he would set his stakes in that coveted glen on the following day. There was only one way to outwit him and gain precedence, and that was by connecting with the terminal point of the old survey, and making a night location through the gap. This scheme originated in the fertile mind of the chief engineer of the T. & W., and he sent his most trusted lieutenant, Charlie Pickett, to carry out the plan. No better selection could have been made, for Charlie Pickett was familiar with every foot of the ground. By his own unaided effort through thirteen years he had risen through the various positions of axeman, chainman, flagman, rodman, and leveller, until now, as transitman, he was intrusted with the most careful and critical work of one of the youngest and most vigorous of the railroad corporations of Pennsylvania.