"Geewhillikers, don't make me do that," groaned the unhappy Brown.
"Get aboard and don't argue. You can come back to-morrow, you know, and you're perfectly safe if you stay awake and don't roll off. Hurry up! If you try to jump off before you reach the bridge I'll shoot."
A moment later the train pulled into the bridge and Crosby hurried back to his anxious companion. Brown was on his way to a station forty miles west, and he did not dare risk jumping off. By the time the train reached the far end of the bridge it was running forty miles an hour.
"Where is he?" she cried in alarm as he rushed with her across the intervening space to the coveted "east-bound."
"I'll tell you all about it when we get inside this train," he answered. "I think Brown is where he can't telegraph to head us off any place along the line, and if we once get into Indiana we are comparatively safe. Up you go!" and he lifted her up the car steps.
"Safe," she sighed, as they dropped into a seat in a coach.
"I'm ashamed to mention it, my dear accomplice, but are you quite sure you have your purse with you? With the usual luck of a common thief, I am penniless."
"Penniless because you gave your fortune to the cause of freedom," she supplemented, fumbling in her chatelaine bag for her purse. "Here it is. The contents are yours until the end of our romance."
The conductor took fare from him to Lafayette and informed the mud-covered gentleman that he could get a train from that city to Chicago at 2:30 in the morning.
"We're all right now," said Crosby after the conductor had passed on. "You are tired, little woman. Lie back and go to sleep. The rough part of the adventure is almost over." He secured a pillow for her, and she was soon resting as comfortably as it was possible in the day coach of a passenger train.