They climbed up the river bank and walked around in the pouring rain, barefoot and treading on broken glass at every step. Neither the conductor of the train or Pullman cars were anywhere to be seen. Only one porter appeared to have survived, and he sat moaning on a piece of debris. The great engine, like a huge living monster that had seen with its single eye the abyss of the broken bridge in time, had leaped the chasm and gone plunging and faring over the ties and rails a half mile beyond the wreck, with the engineer and fireman clinging to it. The lighter portion of the train had struck the embankment of the narrow river. The day cars were piled across the track beyond; the threes Pullmans, smashed and heaped on top of one another, hung on the edge of the broken bridge. Gordon, with the two women and children, finally found a man who had some sense--a fat drummer seated on his sample-cases calmly putting on his shoes by the light of the burning cars. He was talking to a younger drummer sitting near, who fidgeted and kept looking about nervously. "Take it easy, sonny. Put on your shoes," he said, soothingly. "This is awful!" the young one sighed. "Well, we're all right, top side up, marked 'with care.' Don't worry. Put on your shoes. You can't walk in this glass barefoot." When he saw Gordon and his party he stopped tying his shoes and laughed. "Well, partner, you look like a patriarch who's lost his way. Ain't none of your family got shoes?" He looked at Gordon's bleeding feet and at Kate and Ruth shivering behind him in the rain. Gordon smiled and shook his head. The fat man hastily pulled off his own shoes, snatched off those of the younger man beside him and offered them to the ladies. "They won't be what you might call a stylish fit, madam," he said gallantly to Ruth, "but they'll beat broken glass for comfort." Paying no attention to their protests, he made them sit down on the sample-cases and put them on. Turning to Gordon and his companion, he called cheerfully: "Come, men, that Pullman's full of blankets; we must get them out for the women and children before it's too late. It's too dark to find our umbrellas. I believe that fool conductor's got mine anyhow and gone home with it. I haven't seen him anywhere." In a few minutes, he had blankets for all the passengers who had lost their clothes. By daybreak he had found the conductor, counted his tickets, and discovered that out of fifty passengers on the train twenty had been wounded, none fatally, and that thirty had escaped without a scratch. The train had dropped most of its passengers during the day and had only an average of ten people to a coach, and they were seated and sleeping near the centres of each car. By what seemed a miracle, none were killed. Just as the sun rose, the drummer formed the passengers in line, with the conductor bringing up the rear, and marched them to a cabin where he saw smoke curling up from the edge of a field.