Watches were removed from chains, and the jewelry in trunks was taken or mysteriously disappeared. More than $1,500 worth of valuable articles were afterwards recovered by the Mayor by a proclamation, and by detectives. A saloon keeper was found to have appropriated shawls and satchels, and others were found to have diamonds and jewelry in their possession which had been stolen. A young man who had a splinter from the cornice of the car driven through his collar bone was robbed of $300 in money at the Eagle Hotel where he lay, and a gentleman from Hartford had his boots taken from his feet and carried away. The dead in the valley and the wounded in the streets, and the survivors in other places were alike subject to this villainous pillaging. A pair of dominos, or black masks, were found, showing how deliberate had been the robbery with the villains who were out that night. Scarcely anything of value was left after the wreck. One gentleman who had $7,000 on his person was killed and his pocket book found, but the money was gone. Trunks containing the wardrobes of brides, and the jewelry of the wealthy, were burned and destroyed. Watches were burned in the fierce flames until the gold was melted into nuggets, and everything that could be treasured by friends, whether it was the clothes of the dead or the precious keepsakes they had, or the bodies which were more precious than jewels, all disappeared and not a relic or trace could be found. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. MIDNIGHT AT THE WRECK. At twelve o’clock quietness had settled down upon the scene. The streets were deserted. All had formed the impression that the bodies were to be burned, and had gone to their homes, leaving the wreck still burning, and the dead to be consumed. The engines had been ordered to their houses. The lights glimmered from the homes where the wounded were lying. A few were at the wreck. The expressman guarding the treasures in the safe, sat solitary and alone through the long hours, while the flames which were burning precious bodies, crackled and threw their lurid light across the scene. The smell of burning flesh pervaded the air even half a mile away. A horrid sight was presented in the awful valley. The flames which had blazed so high had consumed the wood and furniture of the train. The gilded palaces were reduced to mere skeletons of iron. The bridge lay a mere network of blackened beams. The trucks and wheels and heavy rods were lying in every direction. But beneath these horrid ribs of death, lay the blackened bodies of men, women and children, burned, and still burning, amid the snow and ice. Blue tongues of fire shot here and there amid the blackened mass, as if some unseen monster were still licking up the life of its unburied victims. The white snow lay like a winding sheet along the valley, but the skeleton was in the midst with the tall abutments towering above and the precious bodies silent in death beneath the ruins.