whose bright eyes were seldom known to close, was now curled up
beneath the organ-covering, dreaming, perhaps, of the nut-groves and
spice-islands where he had once known liberty and youth.

Just then it came,--a crash as if heaven and earth had met; a wild,
deep cry, made up of all tones of human agony and fright; the shriek
of escaping steam; the rending and splintering of wood and iron;
destruction, terror, pain, and death, all mingled in one awful
moment. Then those who had escaped unhurt began the sad and terrible
task of withdrawing from the ruin the maimed and bleeding bodies of
those who yet lived, the crushed remains and fragments of those who
had been killed in the moment of the encounter: and, in all the
bewildering confusion of the scene, none had eyes for the little
childish figure, that, hurled from the splintered car, lay for a
while stunned and shaken among the soft grass where it had fallen,
and then, staggering to its feet, fled wildly away into the dim
forest-land.






CHAPTER XVIII.

DORA DARLING.