* * * * *
My blood ran cold as I listened to the pinging of the bullets and the resounding shrieks of the ladies in the train.
Not till then did the last of the men leave the train, and one of them I saw, to my astonishment, bore in his arms apparently a woman in a cloak.
In a brilliant gleam of electric light, shot from the train in the darkness, I thought I saw the face of my Dolores, with a white gag across the mouth, but the idea seemed so preposterous that I did not give it another thought, thinking it to be some phantom of an overwrought brain, and the woman some light-o'-love of the desperado.
The man went straight to a horse, placed the burden he was carrying across the saddle-bow, sprang on to the horse, and with a number of others round him, including the chief, rode away.
They brought a horse for me and I mounted too, and rode along very unwillingly towards the end of the train. As we passed the engine, I saw that the fire-box had been raked out and water poured on it. There was a dense steam arising from it. I conjectured, and conjectured correctly, that they had done this to prevent the train steaming away and giving the alarm, for there was a considerable town not five miles off, the inhabitants of which were no doubt anxiously expecting the express.
When we arrived at the other side of the train, and the leading files of the robbers were passing off the railway line, the identity of the figure carried away across the saddle was put beyond all doubt, and the revelation nearly sent me mad.
Mrs. Darbyshire came shrieking out into the forepart of the car in which I had left her with Dolores.
"They have taken her," she shrieked, "they have taken her away from me as a hostage. It cannot be. Bring her back, bring her back, I implore you!" she cried in Spanish to the men who were passing the train, and who in return only laughed and jeered her.
"Mr. Anstruther," she cried, "save her!"