There was just slant enough to the roadbed here to make it necessary for the engineer to keep some pressure of brakes on the wheels. The heavy train slid down to the place where Stilling had stopped. When the train again came to a halt the headlight did not show the rails for more than ten yards. But it picked out the beginning of a short trestle by which the rails were carried over a deep ravine. Stilling walked back beside the huge boiler of the locomotive and spoke no word until he was directly under Ralph’s window. He was pale. His lips writhed before he could speak, and what he said was in a voice so husky that the listeners could scarcely understand him. “One pillar’s been blown out—blown to pieces. The rails are sagging—have to be braced before anything can get over. Great guns! if we’d come down here at the usual speed, the old mill and every wagon in the string would have been piled in a heap down there in the Devil’s Den!” “By gum!” exclaimed the other fireman. “I thought I got some sound like an explosion as we came down the hill. The dynamite must have gone off only a few minutes ago.” “That burning scarecrow saved all our lives,” muttered Ralph. “_Who did that?_” “If there are ghouls around trying to wreck the train, and there are, then there are likewise watchers who defended us from harm. We have somebody to thank,” said the conductor. There was no more comment on this mysterious thing by the train and engine crew for some time thereafter. There was too much else to do. Somebody had to go forward to the nearest station and telegraph for wrecking crew and other help. A terrible disaster had barely been averted. The passengers aboard the Midnight Flyer on this occasion would not be likely soon to forget the incident. Stilling had not overstated the horror that had been averted. The wires certainly buzzed now, up and down the division. The express was delayed fully two hours, although the wrecking train was brought down from Oxford in record time. The freights began to pile up on both tracks. If this dastardly attempt to wreck the Midnight Flyer was the act of the strikers, they had come near to doing what Andy McCarrey threatened. The division might have been tied up for a couple of days if Ralph’s train had plunged into the Devil’s Den. Some of the crew looked into the matter of the burning scarecrow that had so luckily warned the engine crew of trouble ahead. The straw-stuffed figure had been taken from a small field of corn bordering the right of way. The owner of the field lived at some distance, but he came over to see what had happened. “I was woke up by that big explosion,” he declared. “I thought it was a blast in the quarry. Quarry is ten miles away, though. And then I began to wonder why they were blasting at night. So I got up and looked out, and saw the lights of the train and knew something had happened, because it was standing still. So I came over.”