"She'll stop his liberty and his cigars," persisted Mr. Oliver: "there are no such martinets under the sun as your religious wives. Talking about cigars, would it affect your bonnets, girls, if I lighted one now?" They screamed out together. They would not have their loves of new bonnets poisoned and blackened with cigar smoke; they'd never be fit to go on again. "And you must not smoke in these carriages," added Louisa: "we are near Coombe Dalton station, and the guard would see you." "Pretty wives you'll make when you are married," remarked Oliver. "Afraid of cigar smoke!" The caution, or the bonnets, caused Oliver Jupp to keep his cigar-case in his pocket. Coombe Dalton station, an insignificant one, was about midway between Guild and Katterley. The train did not stop at it. Oliver leaned from the window to take a survey of the route. "We are close to it," said he; "yonder are the lights. Halloa! what's the red light flashing up and down for? That ought to be a green." "If a red light is waving in the green's place, there must be danger," said Rose, quickly. "Red is the danger signal." "There's no danger. If the light indicated danger the train would come to a standstill; it is going on at the same speed." Scarcely had the words quitted Oliver Jupp's mouth when--they scarcely knew what occurred. There was a shriek from the whistle, a shock; and a shriek, not from the whistle, but from human beings in their terror. The train came to a standstill and they with it: they and their carriage were not hurt or inconvenienced; the carriages behind them were not hurt, nor the carriages immediately before them, but the foremost carriages---- What had happened? Unstopped, and dashing on in its speed and recklessness, the engine had dashed into some obstruction on the line, a little past Coombe Dalton station. It ran up a bank, gave a dance, and was forced back on the line, falling sideways, and the three foremost carriages, next to the break van, were dragged with it. The two first, third-class ones, were greatly injured; the third, a second class, less so. Oliver Jupp, with other male passengers, was speedily out of his carriage, running forward to see what assistance he could render to those, his ill-fated fellow-creatures, some of whom were groaning in the death agony.