“Well, where is your papa, then?” asked Myles, looking about with the expectation of seeing a papa at no great distance.
“My papa is on the chu-chu cars.”
“The chu-chu cars?”
“Yes, over there.”
Here the child pointed to a freight train that had just hauled in on a siding beyond the tracks of the main line. Then crying out, “I see my papa,” the child jumped from the platform, and, before Myles could stop him, was running across the tracks toward a twinkling lantern that was approaching from the direction of the freight train.
All at once, with a cry of pain, the child fell directly across one of the glistening lines of steel.
Myles sprang toward him. As he did so the eastbound night express dashed, with a shriek and a roar, out from behind a round-house that had, until that moment, concealed it, and rushed with fiery breath and gleaming head-light toward where the child lay.
Myles’ heart ceased its beating, but he did not hesitate nor flinch, though it seemed impossible that he could get there before the iron monster. He did, though, with a second to spare, and snatched the child as he ran. The little foot was caught in the angle of a switch and the child uttered a sharp scream of pain as the strong young arms tore it away, leaving a tiny shoe behind. Both rolled together in the cinders, barely beyond reach of the cruel wheels that ground over the quivering rails. With a long wild howl, as of baffled rage, the night express swept on, leaving Myles and the child almost suffocated in its dust, and breathless with the rush of wind that followed it.
As Myles staggered to his feet, and lifted the limp form of the child whom he had saved at so imminent a risk of his own life, a man with a lantern on his arm sprang forward, and snatching the child from him, cried, in a tone of agony:
“It’s my boy! My only boy! My little Bob—and he’s killed! The last one; and he had to be taken too! Oh, it’s too hard, too hard!”