At Byers, the section-gang from Twenty-three clambered aboard; at Hamden came the gangs from Twenty-four and Twenty-five. Nearly sixty men were crowded together in the car; but there was little noise. It reminded Allan of a funeral. And it was a funeral. The great railroad, binding East to West, was lying dead, its back broken, useless, its circulation stopped. The line was blocked, the track torn up—it was no longer warm, living, vital. It had been torn asunder. It was a mere useless mass of wood and steel. These men were hastening to resurrect it, to make it whole again. At McArthur the superintendent came aboard with a yellow paper in his hand,—the conductor’s report of the accident,—and he and the train-master bent their heads together over it. The men watched them intently. “Is it a bad one, sir?” asked Jack at last. “Bad enough,” answered the superintendent. “It seems that first Ninety-eight broke in two on the grade just beyond Vinton. Track so slippery they couldn’t hold, and she ran back into the second section. They came together in the cut at the foot of the grade, and fifteen cars loaded with nut coal were wrecked. Miller seems the only one hurt, but the track’s torn up badly.” “Nut coal!” said Jack, with a whistle. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, boys.” The men nodded—they knew now what to expect. And they fell to talking together in low tones, telling stories of past wrecks, of feats of endurance in the breathless battle which always follows when this leviathan of steel is torn asunder. But the superintendent had used one word which Allan had not wholly understood, and he took the first opportunity to ask Jack about it. “What did Mr. Heywood mean, Jack,” he inquired, “when he said the train broke in two?” “That’s so,” and Jack laughed. “It’s your first one—I’d forgot that. I wish it was mine,” and he forthwith explained just how the accident had probably happened. A “break-in-two” occurs usually as a train is topping a heavy grade. The unusual strain breaks a coupling-pin or pulls out a draw-bar, and the portion of the train released from the engine goes whirling back down the grade, carrying death and destruction with it, unless the crew can set the brakes and get it stopped. Or, on a down-grade, a coupling-pin jumps out and then the two sections come together with a crash, unless the engineer sees the danger in time, and runs away at full speed from the pursuing section. It is only freights that “break in two,” for passenger couplings are made heavy enough to withstand any strain; besides, the moment a passenger-train parts, the air-brakes automatically stop both sections. But to freight crews there is no danger more menacing than the “break-in-two,” although, happily, this danger is gradually growing less and less, with the introduction of air-brakes on freight-cars as well as passenger.