“Now comes the strangest part of the story,” the warden continued. “Not one of those men knew anything about running an engine, and they pulled the throttle wide open. To do that suddenly is very dangerous, and almost on the instant the engine blew off one of her cylinder heads. That was all that saved the men’s lives, for guards in the sentry boxes were firing at them with rifles. But so much steam escaped from the disabled cylinder that they were completely enveloped, and the guards could not aim. The rascals literally rolled out of range in a cloud of steam, and were away before we could reach them. “However,” the warden went on, “they had not gone more than four or five miles before the other cylinder head blew out, and the engine of course came to a stop. Then the men jumped off and took to the woods. They are still in convict clothes, and I have twenty men hunting them. We shall soon have them back.” “What a story to write!” Dick exclaimed when the warden concluded. “It’s better than fiction.” “Fiction!” sneered Henderson of the Tribune; “our facts beat fiction every day. There would be no fiction if there were no facts, Mr. Sumner.” Dick did not stop to ponder over this remarkable proposition; he was too anxious to go out over the bridge to the quarry and see the scene of the escape, so that he could describe it accurately. The warden took the reporters all over the ground, and after that they separated, each one to pick up whatever additional information he could. It occurred to Dick that the railroad people would have something to say about this summary mode of taking one of their engines, and he knew that the more people he saw who were in any way connected with the escape, the better story he could make. He went first to see the telegraph operator at Sing Sing, for something must have been done by wire. He soon made friends with the operator and had a long talk with him. [Illustration: “YOU’RE JUST IN TIME, RANDALL!”] “There’s a telegraph office at the prison, you know,” said the operator, “and while the thing was happening they wired me, ‘Four convicts stolen engine of 89, and running down the track with it.’ Eighty-nine is the number of the freight train, and they knew it. Well, sir, you can just believe that gave me a start. An engine running wild down the track! There was no telling what they might run into, nor what lives or property they might destroy. My business was to send the news to the superintendent in the Grand Central Station and I did that just as quick as these jars of lightning would let me.” That was as much as the operator knew about it, but a word that he dropped gave Dick a hint of something better to come. To work out this new clew, however, it was necessary for him to go to Tarrytown, and he took the next train for that place, which is the next station below Sing Sing. In a few minutes he was talking with the Tarrytown station agent.