Crash! Recoil! CRASH! And a swift, appalling darkness, cut across by one woman's piercing scream! Running footsteps! The venomous hissing of escaping steam; the stench of gas; and then in that Stygian darkness, rising clear above the undertone of groans and short-breathed oaths, was a girl's voice crying: "Dorrie! Dorrie! Oh, Dorrie!"
Noises outside were growing louder, and Sybil scrambled up from the floor, where she had fallen, and, mad with terror, stretched out groping hands in the direction she had last seen Dorothy, and oh! blessed God! encountered two little hands, that closed on hers. The next moment she had her utterly silent sister in her arms, and impatiently shook away something warm that kept creeping, creeping down her temple and her cheek. The din outside was awful, the darkness an anguish! Suddenly there was a flare of a match—it went out! A groping, searching hand struck Sybil's shoulder. Another match, a wax one, was lighted, and the young man she had jested about, hatless and very pale, asked, swiftly: "Is she hurt? I hope she has not fainted?"
He leaned closer, and Dorothy's great, strained blue eyes stared up at him from her sister's breast.
"Can't you speak, dear?" pleaded Sybil. "Oh, she is half killed with fright!" she added, turning to the stranger, and again the creeping thing was on her cheek, and Dorothy cried, sharply: "Blood! blood! Oh! Sybbie's hurt! Can't you help her?" And the match was out, and they were again in that hell of darkness and steam and gas and roar! But a calm and friendly voice came to them, saying: "Stay here; take part of these matches and light one now and then while I get out and find what can be done! Oh, here come the torches! Now we'll soon have help!" But before he left them he drew from a pocket a handkerchief, folded it, and swiftly tied it about Sybil's head, and even then the girl smiled at his naïve, lover-like excuse: "The blood frightens her so!" And through a few agonized minutes the girls clung tightly together, shivering in a very ague of terror. And then, through the billows of steam, the low-hanging, strangling clouds of smoke, they saw men with lanterns, heard orders, short and sharp, then their friend was lifting them down from the high, high step; and Sybil, with her arms about Dorothy, was aided, led, pushed, or pulled along at the will of the only person who noticed their presence or existence.
There had been much noise—noise of voices, of metal ringing on metal, of hurrying feet—but suddenly it ceased. A moment's quiet came into that place of mad excitement. The crowd before them drew apart. Like lightning, their guide threw himself in front of the girls, whispering: "Don't look! Don't let her look!" And Sybil, with chilling blood, recalled that one piercing cry, that woman's cry, and to save her soul could not help sending a glance toward the four men who bore upon a stretcher a hastily covered form, so still, so pathetically slight! Covered? Yes, but one little foot in oxford-tie was exposed. A foot so like—so like— And Sybil caught Dorothy in an embrace fierce enough to wring a cry from her, and the words: "What is it, dear? Are you hurt again? Have you turned your ankle, or— Oh, Sybbie! It was that poor man! Oh, can't we get out? Can't we?" and her voice broke into frightened sobs.
The other two exchanged meaning glances, for, as this outburst had been caused by the sight of two stalwart blue-coated men, who, after the manner of children "making a chair" were carrying on their crossed arms a passenger whose leg was broken, they trembled at the thought of the collapse that must surely have followed upon the sight of that frail, broken thing, whose mute authority had yet the power to silence the awful din.
How they escaped from the stifling, sloppy, grimy place of torment they could not have told, had the saving of an immortal soul depended upon such telling. There was a ladder, and a failure, and a carrying of the ladder to another place by the aid of a trainman, who roared some advice as he stole a few moments for their service. Then coaxings for Dorrie, sharp directions for Sybil, and—and somehow they were standing in a street, dazzled by the sunlight, sick and faint and dirty and drabbled, but out in the pure air once more. And knowing that Dorothy's life might have gone out from sheer terror but for the aid and encouragement of the grave young man, Sybil held out both hands to him, crying: "I thank you from my heart, and I will serve you at command, for Dorrie's sake, who—who——"
Her lips whitened—trembled. She clutched blindly at his arm for support. Her self-control had been wonderful, but, like everything else, it had to be paid for. The shock to her nerves had been terrible, her wound had bled profusely, and when a strong arm about her waist lifted her over the threshold into a quiet pharmacy she was just barely conscious and no more.
The bald-headed little proprietor closed his doors upon the gaping crowd, and, while reviving Sybil and dressing the really ugly cut her head had received from striking against the frame of a seat, when she had fallen to the floor, he called upon his wife to descend from her room above, and she, with ready sympathy, brushed and pinned up Dorothy's raiment and sponged away the smears and smuts from her face. And when the cheerful little woman turned for a moment to the young man, to tell him she could bring him her husband's second hat, if he did not mind its being a bit burned by the suns of last summer, he overheard poor Dorothy saying: "Whatever shall we do, Sybbie? We bought return tickets, and—and we only have left ten cents, that was to have paid our street-car fare to god-mother's."
A swift "S-h-h!" from Sybil silenced her. The man's heart contracted with a pang of pity for their distressful situation. The next moment he stood before them, and, addressing the elder, said: "Miss Lawton, I am going to ask permission to introduce myself to you, as there is no one to perform the service for me. I am a sort of neighbor of your family, since I, too, am summering at Yonkers. My name is Galt—Leslie Galt—and in consequence of this accident I ask you to trust yourself and your sister to my care, until I can leave you at your own front door—will you?" He waited for no answer, but continued: "I will have a carriage here almost directly, and we will board a Harlem train, get off at Mount Vernon, and then drive to your house."