* * * * *

He reeled and fell again, but this time did not lose consciousness.

Finally, when he was able to drag himself up the embankment to where the car hung crosswise on the track, the sight he saw was so appalling he forgot his own wounds.

On the side opposite to where he had fallen, Burke and Shea lay side by side, just as they had walked and worked and fought for years, and just as they would have voted on the morrow had they been spared.  Immediately in front of the car, his feet over one rail and his neck across the other, lay the mortal remains of Kelly the boss, the stub of his black pipe still sticking between his teeth.  As Lucien stooped to lift the helpless head his own blood, spurting from the wound in his neck, flooded the face and covered the clothes of the limp foreman.  Finding no signs of life in the section boss, the wounded, and by this time thoroughly frightened, French-Canadian turned his attention to the other two victims.  Swiftly now the realization of the awful tragedy came over the wounded man.  His first thought was of the express now nearly due.  With a great effort he succeeded in placing the car on the rails, and then began the work of loading the dead.  Out of respect for the office so lately filled by Kelly, he was lifted first and placed on the front of the car, his head pillowed on Lucien’s coat.  Next he put Burke aboard, bleeding profusely the while; and then began the greater task of loading Shea.  Shea was a heavy man, and by the time Lucien had him aboard he was ready to faint from exhaustion and the loss of blood.

Now he must pump up over the little hill; for if the express should come round the curve and fall down the grade, the hand-car would be in greater danger than ever.

After much hard work he gained the top of the hill, the hot blood spurting from his neck at each fall of the handle-bar, and went hurrying down the long easy grade to Charlevoix.

To show how the trifles of life will intrude at the end, it is interesting to hear Lucien declare that one of the first thoughts that came to him on seeing the three prostrate figures was, that up to that moment the wreck had worked a Republican gain of one vote, with his own in doubt.

But now he had more serious work for his brain, already reeling from exhaustion.  At the end of fifteen minutes he found himself hanging onto the handle, more to keep from falling than for any help he was giving the car.  The evening breeze blowing down the slope helped him, so that the car was really losing nothing in speed.  He dared not relax his hold; for if his strength should give out and the car stop, the express would come racing down through the twilight and scoop him into eternity.  So he toiled on, dazed, stupefied, fighting for life, surrounded by the dead.

Presently above the singing of the wheels he heard a low sound, like a single, smothered cough of a yard engine suddenly reversed.  Now he had the feeling of a man flooded with ice-water, so chilled was his blood.  Turning his head to learn the cause of delay (he had fancied the pilot of an engine under his car), he saw Burke, one of the dead men, leap up and glare into his face.  That was too much for Lucien, weak as he was, and twisting slightly, he sank to the floor of the car.