“You amuse me immensely.  You are almost as outspoken as little Harry, and, like him, you mistake the impression of the moment for the immutable.”

“Now, that’s not fair to me.  I’ve been constant to you.  Own up, Madge, haven’t I?”

With a glance and smile which she never gave to others, and rarely to him, she said: 

“I own up.  I don’t believe a real brother would have been half so nice.”.

“Let the past guarantee the future, then.  Shake hands against all future misunderstandings.”

She was scarcely ready to shake hands on such a basis, but of course would have complied.  In the slight confusion her hand relaxed its grasp on the curb-rein, and at the same moment a locomotive, coming along the side of the opposite mountain, blew a shrill whistle.  Instantly her horse had the bit in his teeth, and was off at a furious pace.

At first she did not care, but soon found, with anxiety, that he paid no attention to her efforts to check him, and that his pace was passing into a mad run.  The gorge was growing narrower, and the lofty mountains stood, with their rocky feet, nearer and nearer together.  She could see through the intervening trees that the road and rail-track were becoming closely parallel, and at last realized that her horse was unmanageable.

When the engineer of the train saw Madge’s desperate riding he surmised that her horse was not under control, and put on extra steam in order to take the exciting cause of the animal’s terror out of the way.  He thought he could easily reach the summit of the clove where the carriage-drive crossed the track before Madge, and then pass swiftly over the down-grade beyond; but he had not calculated on the terrific speed of the horse; and when at last the track and roadway were almost side by side the frantic beast, with his pale rider, was abreast of the train.  For a moment the engineer was irresolute, and then, too late, as he feared, “slowed up.”

The narrow road, with a precipitous mountain on the left, was so near to the flying train that the passengers in an open car could almost touch Madge, and she was to them like a strange and beautiful apparition, with her white face and large dark eyes filled with an unspeakable dread.

“Oh, stop the train!” she cried, and her voice, with the whole power of her lungs, rang out far above the clatter of the wheels, wakening despairing echoes from the mountains impending on either side.

The speed of the cars was perceptibly checked; the passengers saw the foam-flecked brute, with head stubbornly bent downward and eye of fire, pass beyond them.  An instant later, to their horrified gaze and that of Graydon’s, who was following as fast as a less swift horse could carry him, Madge and the locomotive appeared to come together.  The young man gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry between a curse and a shout, and whipped his horse forward furiously.

The speed of the train was renewed, and he saw through the open car that Madge must have passed unharmed before the engine, just grazing it.  It also appeared that she was gaining the mastery, for her horse was rearing; then cars of ordinary make intervened and hid her from view a moment, and the train clattered noisily on.