LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 539, 10 March 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A RAILWAY ADVENTURE. [j From Chambers' Journal .] { Concluded.) * I’ll try and dodge her that way,’ he said to himself; ‘ she shall not sit and glare at me in this fashion 1 ’ But she too immediately shifted her place, and, rising to her full height, which was very great, went over to the seat exactly opposite to him, never for one single second dropping her eyes from his. He looked out of window with a vague notion of getting out of the carriage ; when suddenly, passing a little station which he recognised, but at which the train did not stop, an idea struck him—an idea after his own heart—a comic idea 1 He availed himself of it on the instant, and assuming an ease which doubtless sat ill upon him, and which he was far from feeling, he pointed with his thumb back towards the station they had just passed, as he said mysteriously in a hollow voice; *Do you know that place ? ’ She seemed to answer in the affirmative by a slight inclination of the head as before. ‘ Ah! you do. Good ! Longmoor,* he went on; ‘ then I don’t mind telling you a secret.’ He paused. (I’ll frighten her,’he thought.) ‘Criminal lunatics,’ he said aloud; ‘I am one of them. I have just escaped from there ! ’ He leaned forward, as if to impress her with his words ; she also bent forward until her lips almost touched his ear, as she hissed into it; ‘So have I! ’ With what had already gone before, th's put the finishing touch to Jack’s uneasiness of mind. It was not, as he said, the mere presence of the woman, or the revelation which his joke had elicited, which scared him, though the circumstance in itself might be unpleasant enough. ‘ I should have faced it right away from the first, as any man would have done, had it not been for the remarkable influence her face and look had upon me; that unaccountable feeling that she was no stranger to me, it was, that unnerved, and even appalled me.’ iv No sooner had she uttered the words, ‘ So have I,’than Jack sprang to the cord communicating with the guard’s van, for he felt their truth, and saw in them a keg to the whole mystery. But ere his hand had reached the cord, she had seized him round the waist with one arm as with the grip of a vice, and at the same instant he felt one of those terrible hands at his throat. Every effort to release him was fruitless; her strength seemed superhuman, and was as far beyond his as was her stature. Her face glowered close down upon his now, still with the same fell expression. ‘ The only thing I could have done,’ went on Jack, in describing the scene to me—and just here, he shall speak for himself : * the only means by which I might perhaps have made her relax her hold would have been by aiming one or two tremendous blows with my right fist (which was at liberty) at her face. Had it been a man’s, there would have been no hesitation; had it been indeed that of an ordinary woman, at such a pass I should not have hesitated to strike her, to stun her, if I could, by any means ; but the face—that face, that I seemed to know so well, yet so mysteriously, I could not raise my hand against it, and, as my arm swung up with the first impulse, to deal her. a blow, it fell helpless by my side. Vain were my efforts to get her hand away from my throat; there was a terrible swaying to and fro for a minute or two, I felt the grip of the long fingers tightening, and myself choking. Suddenly we fell, the whole carriage seemed to be falling—there was a fearful jerk or two, a strange upheaving of the floor, a tremendous rattle and crash—l appeared to be thrown headlong to some great distance, and—all was darkness! ’ * * * * * * The termination of that deadly struggle was brought about in a manner as marvellous and unlooked for as could well have been imagined. Some fifty souls, say, were travelling in that train; all, save one, in apparent security. Jack’s life was in danger, when, lo ! by one of those marvellous coincidences which do happen at times in the supreme moments of existence, the rescue came, but at the cost of many a life, which, but just before, would have seemed worth treble the purchase of Jack’s. At the very instant that his might have depended upon another tightening grip or two from the hand of a maniac, a frightful catastrophe occurred to the train. The tire of an engine-wheel broke, and half a dozen carriages were hurled down a steep embankment. The scene that succeeded is, unhappily, of too common an occurrence to need more than a word of reference here. Seven passengers were killed outright; double that number slightly or badly hurt; the remainder escaping, as by a miracle, with nothing worse that a severe shaking. My friend was amongst the shaken. He > had been thrown clear of the debris, on to a soft grassy spot, half-bank, half-hedge; ; emphatically, his life was saved ! But what followed it was that which? caused the suffering, that wrought the ter- - rible change in Jack. In the darkness of that soft autumn night, he strove, foremost amongst those who nad'l been spared, to render such help as was % possible to the less fortunate. When the , official assistance came, and fires were set blazing to give light, almost his first care . was to try and seek out his dangerous fellow traveller. In the confusion, nobody waa prepared, of course, to listen to Jack’s account of her, even had he been prepared then to give it. She was not, evidently, moving about amongst the crowd; he assured himself of that; but supposing her, like himself, to have escaped injury (and ho concluded that this was likely), might she not, with the stealth and cunning incidental to her malady, be hiding, and by thus farther eluding detection, become, with her homij cidal mania, as dangerous to the community at large, as some fierce, -wild animal would be? The thought made him shudder; ho must lose no time in assuring himself of her fate. As soon as an approach to order could be evolved out of that awful chaos, he had convinced himself that she was not amongst the injured. Then he turned to the dead. His eye fell upon several mutilated and piotionless forms, which had been laid in an ominous row at the foot of one part of the embankment ; hers was not amongst them; he could find no trace of her. (To bo continued.')