Down one of these streets walked the young lady, curiously interested in all about her.  She seemed glad to escape from the train and its people, and she hurried along, the fresh spring wind blowing her hair from beneath her cap, the ends of her long coat fluttering.

Lorry stood on the platform watching her; then he lighted a cigarette and followed.  He had a vague feeling that she ought not to be alone with all the workmen.  She started to come back before he reached her, however, and he turned again toward the station.  Then he heard a sudden whistle, and a minute later from the end of the street he saw the train pulling out.  Lorry had rather distinguished himself in college as a runner, and instinctively he dashed up the street, reaching the tracks just in time to catch the railing of the last coach.  But there he stopped and stood with thumping heart while the coaches slid smoothly up the track, leaving him behind.  He remembered he was not the only one left, and he panted and smiled.  It occurred to him—­when it was too late—­that he might have got on the train and pulled the rope or called the conductor, but that was out of the question now.  After all, it might not be such a merry game to stay in that filthy little town; it did not follow that she would prove friendly.

A few moments later she appeared—­wholly unconscious of what had happened.  A glance down the track and her face was the picture of despair.

Then she saw him coming toward her with long strides, flushed and excited.  Regardless of appearances, conditions or consequences, she hurried to meet him.

“Where is the train?” she gasped, as the distance between them grew short, her blue eyes seeking his beseechingly, her hands clasped.

“It has gone.”

“Gone?  And we—­we are left?”

He nodded, delighted by the word “we.”

“The conductor said thirty minutes; it has been but twenty,” she cried, half tearfully, half angrily, looking at her watch.  “Oh, what shall I do?” she went on, distractedly.  He had enjoyed the sweet, despairing tones, but this last wail called for manly and instant action.

“Can we catch the train?  We must!  I will give one thousand dollars.  I must catch it.”  She had placed her gloved hand against a telegraph pole to steady her trembling, but her face was resolute, imperious, commanding.

She was ordering him to obey as she would have commanded a slave.  In her voice there was authority, in her eye there was fear.  She could control the one but not the other.

“We cannot catch the flyer.  I want to catch it as much as you and”—­here he straightened himself—­“I would add a thousand to yours.”  He hesitated a moment-thinking.  “There is but one way, and no time to lose.”

With this he turned and ran rapidly toward the little depot and telegraph office.

II