[Illustration: "THE RAGGED OLD ARM THAT FELLED IT DOWN."]
"In there!" cried the boy. "There! _There!_ Oh, don't you think perhaps my papä took some _other_ train? Oh, she's coming! I'll help. I can help. Oh, the door's too big for me!"
But not too big for the ragged old arm that felled it down as an axe fells the last rings of a stricken tree. Not too big for the remnant of strength in the once muscular slave. Not too big for the fiery old heart that trouble and toil and hunger and loneliness had never quenched.
The door went down--glass crashed--another door yielded--two wild figures fell into the superintendent's private office. The little one climbed like a monkey upon a shelf he knew of, and then the two rushed out of the rocking building into the resounding air, on which human shrieks smote steadily, as it was said they did all that awful night. Again, the whistle of the train--near now--nearer--
[Illustration: "THE LITTLE ONE CLIMBED LIKE A MONKEY UPON A SHELF."]
As the pathetic couple ran up the torn and twisted track, Donny began to sob aloud; but all he said was, "Papä! Papä! Papä!"
"Gib 'em to me, sonny," said the Negro, with the authority of age and danger. "I kin run faster'n you, honey! Goramercy, _dar she am_!"
[Illustration: "THE OLD MAN SEIZED THE TORPEDOES."]
The old man seized the torpedoes, and rushing away with them, vanished in the darkness. The unknown, collarless dog followed him. Donny, sobbing and calling his father's name, pushed on as well as he could by himself. As he ran he tried to say his prayers, but all he could remember was, "Our Father who art in heaven."
[Illustration: "THIS COMFORTED THE LAD INCREDIBLY."]
Then he thought, how soon might his father on earth be father in heaven, too? He could not say that prayer. The boy, like many an older and wiser than Donny, only cried instead of praying. As he ran along in this sad fashion, something hit against him, whinnying in the dark. It was Ben Bow, the horse he had ridden ever since he was a baby. Now, this comforted the lad incredibly, to have one of the family with him.
THE old man and the train were now face to face. The locomotive came cautiously, for the shocks had penetrated far up the road, but too fast--far too fast. Where the track had gone to pieces, a mass of twisted rails and tossing sleepers and furrowed earth, a bank--what is called a high bank in Southern topography--raised itself just in the turn of time to have sent the derailed train plunging down.