All at once there was a terrible rumble, then a shock that telescoped the train and made it a jumble of broken, flying timbers and crushed and bleeding humanity, on which the gray light of early dawn shone with dim gleams through a drizzle of summer rain. Dallas felt himself hurled violently somewhere--to death, he hoped, in that brief moment before he landed with a dull thud on the soft grass in a field close by the railroad. He lay still a few moments, feeling as if every bone in his body were broken, and just waiting languidly for death to still his fluttering breath. The thought came to him of Daisie. Would she be sorry when she heard he was dead? That he had met his death obeying her wish, that he should go away forever? Then he became conscious of groans, and cries, and anxious voices. People were going about among the dead and wounded, helping them out from the awful wreck. Two of the trainmen bent over him, saying: “Look at this fellow, hurled through the roof of the car out into the hay field. Is he dead, or just stunned?” Dallas opened wide his large black eyes, and gave them a start. “Not dead, you see, thanks to this shock of hay I fell on. I thought at first my bones were all broken, but give me your hands, and let’s see if I can stand up. So! Why, I’m as sound as a dollar!” in amazement. It was true. Death had passed him by, to take others not as willing to go as this unhappy lover. Several persons had been killed outright, and as many more wounded, so Dallas joined the relief corps that was so busy, and in his anxiety over others forgot for a while his own grief. Hearing painful groans from beneath a pile of timbers, he set to work removing them, when he was arrested by the groaning voice muttering: “Don’t try to help me--let me die in this trap! It’s as good as I deserve!” “We might all be dead, friend, if we got our just deserts,” replied Dallas, and did not desist until he dragged out the imprisoned man from the obstructions that had pinned him down. “Your arm’s broken, my poor fellow,” he said sympathetically to the dark, handsome young man, who opened his eyes, stared at him a moment in pallid wonder, then fainted dead away like a girl. This did not surprise Dallas, who feared that the man might be internally injured. But he borrowed a flask of whisky from the porter, and set to work to revive him with fine success. The dark eyes opened again, and the man groaned woefully: “So I’m dead, and yours is the first shade to greet me in the infernal regions, Dallas Bain?” Laughing shortly, Dallas answered: “I don’t know where we’ve met before, friend, but that’s my name, and I hope you’ll pardon my short memory in forgetting you. But really you’ve made a mistake. We are both on top of the ground yet, and you seem likely to survive your accident.”