The locomotive ahead was fully a mile away before Roberts got old 93 in the right trim, as he expressed it. He clucked audibly as his pet began to snort and quiver. Pieces of the machinery rattled warningly, but that only amused him. "She's loose-jointed," he admitted to Ralph; "but she'll hold together, I reckon, if you can only keep her to the rails. That fellow ahead is sprinting, but we're catching up fast. What's the ticket?" "Our only hope is to beat the runaway and switch or bump her." "There'll be some damage." "There will probably be worse damage if we don't stop her." The paralleled tracks widened a few miles further on to get to the solid side of a boggy reach. It was here that No. 93 came fairly abreast of the runaway. It was here, too, that the furnace door of the runaway was opened to admit coal, and the back flare of the hissing embers outlined the figure of a man in the cab. "She's spurting," observed Roberts, watching all this, as the runaway started on a prodigious dash. "I see she is," nodded Ralph, grimly trying to hold No. 93 over, yet aware that she was already set at her highest possible point of tension. "And we're getting near." "Yes, there are the station lights ahead." About four hundred yards to the left the runaway dashed past a deserted station. Ralph never let up on speed. The chase had now led to the cut-off, a stretch of about twenty miles. Where this ran into the main again there was an important station. This point Ralph was sure had been advised of the situation from headquarters if Glidden had done his duty, and the young railroader felt sure that he had. "Hello; now it is a chase!" exclaimed Roberts. In circling into the cut-off No. 93 had passed a series of switches, finally sending her down the same rails taken by the runaway. "It's now or never, and pretty quick at that," said Ralph to his fireman. "Crowd her, Roberts." "She's doing pretty nigh her best as it is," replied the fireman. "I don't know as she'll stand much more crowding." "That's better," said Ralph in a satisfied tone, as, fired up to the limit, the old rattletrap made a few more pounds of steam. "Going to scare or bump the fellow ahead?" grinned Roberts, his grimed face dripping with perspiration. "We're after her close now. It's our chance to gain. They don't dare to coal up for fear of losing speed." A score of desperate ideas as to overtaking, crippling, wrecking or getting aboard of the runaway thronged the mind of the young railroader. They were gaining now in leaps and bounds. It was at a risk, however, Ralph realized fully. No. 93 was shaking and wobbling, at times her clattering arose to a grinding squeal of the wheels, as though she resented the terrific strain put upon her powers of speed and endurance. "Whew! there was a tilt," whistled Roberts, as No. 93 scurried a curve where she threatened to dip clear over sideways into a swampy stretch which had undermined the solid roadbed.