They tell the story yet on the P. & O., and, indeed, everywhere that railroad men foregather—they tell it with shining eyes and fast-beating hearts—how Jack Welsh, grasping in an instant the meaning of Allan’s words, tied his handkerchief over mouth and nose, and fought his way inch by inch into that burning house, crawling on hands and knees with his face close to the floor where the smoke was thinnest—fought his way up the stairs and from room to room, until he found the one where five men lay, bound and senseless, on the floor; and they tell how he dragged them one by one to the open air, feeling the hot floor tremble under him toward the end, and himself falling unconscious beside the last man as he dropped him to the ground.

They tell the story with the proud consciousness that this man was one of themselves, and that what he did was done in the way of duty, with no thought of fame or reward, without pausing to count the risk.

But even this heroism might have been of small avail, had not Reddy Magraw at that instant come upon the scene. Let him tell the story, as he told it next day to Mrs. Welsh.

“You know, whin I come down to your house the first thing in the mornin’ an’ found Jack had gone out to Schooley’s, I was purty mad, fer we had kind of arranged t’ go out there togither, if Allan didn’t show up; an’ it didn’t seem t’ me that he was playin’ just fair, though o’ course I understand now that he didn’t have time t’ call me. Well, I made up my mind I’d git out there as quick as I could, so I hopped the first train I could ketch, which was second ninety-eight, and I reckon I must have jumped off not more’n half an hour after Jack an’ Mamie did—though mind you, you hadn’t said anything about Mamie goin’ along, an’ I reckon I know why,” and here he stopped for a long look deep into Mrs. Welsh’s eyes.

“Go ahead with the story,” she said. “Though I don’t say you ain’t right.”

“O’ course I’m right,” said Reddy, confidently. “Well, as I was sayin’, I got off the train an’ wandered around fer some time, an’ then struck the road an’ started t’ foller it; an’ purty soon I seed smoke over the tree-tops an’ after that I didn’t loiter none, I tell you.

“Well, sir, when I run around the corner o’ that house, I purty nigh dropped dead in my tracks. There on the ground lay about a dozen men, as it seemed to me; there was the lunatic, an’ a sight he was, with his face all covered with blood; an’ there was Jack, an’ his face was covered with blood, too, but not his own, the lunatic’s; and there was Allan West, lookin’ deader ’n a salt mackerel; there was five other fellys, some a-layin’ nice an’ still, an’ some kind o’ squirmin’ around an’ moanin’; an’ there was Mamie, with Allan’s head in her lap a-lookin’ most dead herself; an’ when I see her settin’ there, I tell you my heart jest seemed to swell up inside me like it was a-goin’ t’ bust.

“Well, I didn’t know no more what to do than a rabbit. There was eight men whose lives depended on me, more or less; not that I’d ’a’ cared about the lunatic, but even without him there was seven, an’ me no doctor, neither. But Mamie certainly did show what was in her. Where she learned it I don’t know, but she set me t’ pumpin’ them fellers’ arms up an’ down n’ blowin’ down their throats—Jack an’ Allan first—an’ it wasn’t a great while till Jack came around. He was kind o’ weak an’ giddy, but not fer long; an’ in ten or fifteen minutes, we had three others all right; an’ jest about then, the lunatic began to come to, so we tied his hands an’ feet t’ make sure he didn’t git away, or sneak up on any of us from behind an’ cave our heads in. An’ when he did come to, he laid there an’ cussed somethin’ frightful. I wanted t’ hit him with the rock ag’in, but Mamie said no, to gag him, an’ we stuffed his mouth full of his own dirty clothes, an’ I guess he wished he’d kept ’em cleaner.

“But what worried us most of all was Allan. He jest laid there limp as a rag, an’ Mamie workin’ with him, purty nigh as white as he was.”

“He can’t die!” she kept saying to herself, over and over. “He can’t die! It was God brought me here to save him, and he can’t die now!”

The smoke and flames had burst up from the burning house, a beacon to all the country-side, and assistance was at hand ere long; strong hands and tender hearts; and presently two great wagons, bedded with straw to take conscious and unconscious alike to Schooley’s, whither already a swift rider had been dispatched to summon aid from Wadsworth. And at Wadsworth, too, it may well be believed that no time was lost. A special was got ready in a hurry; doctors and nurses summoned; and when the little cavalcade reached Schooley’s, the special was waiting there for it; and trained hands took over the work of relief.

Trained hands which worked swiftly and surely, and presently Allan opened his eyes and looked up at Mamie and smiled at her.

“Dear Mamie!” he murmured and closed his eyes and slept.

And the overwrought girl, conscious for the first time of her utter fatigue, reeled and would have fallen had not a strong arm caught her and carried her to a cot.

I have wondered often what force it was drew Mamie from her bed, that morning, with sure knowledge of Allan’s danger, and guided her to him along that rutted country road. The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing, with the seeming power of projecting itself through space, at times, and summoning loved ones or conveying a message to them.

Science seems to admit so much—or, at least, hesitates to deny it, in face of the evidence. And I have sometimes thought that, as Allan fell through the swirling smoke down that flight of stairs in the old stone house, his last conscious thought of Mamie, that thought somehow flashed to her across the miles that lay between them—a C. Q. D. signal of distress, as it were, from him to her, on the wonderful wireless of the mind.

At least, I have no other explanation—I only know it really happened just as I have told it here.

A great crowd was waiting when that special pulled in to Wadsworth—a crowd which cheered and cheered as Allan and Jack Welsh and Mamie were borne to the carriages which were in waiting; a crowd from which three women threw themselves upon the conductor and brakemen, weak but smiling; a crowd which cursed the idiot and would have torn him from his cot and committed I know not what violence but for the platoon of police, assisted by Stanley’s specials, with Stanley himself, saturnine yet smiling, at the head of them.

For Stanley had returned and with him three prisoners and a wagon load of the richest silks ever shipped over an American railroad.

For the whole thing had been a case of robbery, after all, just as Stanley had suspected.

It had been carefully planned. The conspirators—old hands at the game—had learned that a shipment of silks of unusual richness had been made by a New York house to its jobbers in Saint Louis—had even received from some traitorous clerk the number of the car in which they were carried—had flagged the train, took conductor and brakemen prisoners, as they hurried forward to find out what the red light meant; had afterwards secured the engineer and fireman at the point of a revolver, extinguished the headlight, and looted the car at their leisure.

Then, after carefully sealing it up again so that the robbery would not be discovered until the car arrived at its destination, they had convoyed the prisoners to the old stone house, and committed them to the care of the half-witted monster they had brought with them from the city slums, with instructions that they be released in forty-eight hours, in which time they fancied they would be able to get well beyond reach of pursuit.

But they had not fully appreciated their confederate’s crazed condition; they had not foreseen in what a horrible way he would carry out their instructions—give them credit for that. Nor had they foreseen that, within a very few hours, one of the keenest detectives in the middle west would be after them. They had thought such search as would be made would be for the missing men, and had hoped that, in the disorganized condition of the road, no very effective search could be made at all.

How Stanley followed them, like the bloodhound that he was, and finally ran them down need not be related in detail here. Stanley himself has told the story in the book of memoirs which he published after he had retired from active service. Once he had got his clue to them, the rest was a question of only a few hours; for a wagon heavily laden cannot proceed at any great rate of speed, nor can it pass along the roads unseen. He had sworn in two deputies at a farm house, and with their assistance, had no difficulty in surprising the robbers, as they jogged along a country road, thinking themselves quite secure. It was merely the matter of a levelled revolver and a stern command, and the application of certain lengths of rope to wrists and ankles. Then, turning the wagon about, he had driven in triumph back to Wadsworth, reaching there just at dawn.

And the first news he had heard was of Allan’s disappearance. Puzzled and worried, he had seen his prisoners lodged safely in the county jail, and was just preparing to join the search himself, when news of the rescue flashed in from Schooley’s.

Oh, but there were crazy people on Wadsworth’s streets that day—people wild with excitement, telling the story over and over to each other, shaking each other’s hands, repeating this detail or that as though they would never tire of hearing it. And the reporters! Well, the wildest stretch of their imaginations had conceived no such story as this! And they flashed it forth to the four points of the compass, so that, next morning, the whole country read the tale of the heroism of Jack Welsh and his daughter, Mamie.

It was perhaps, a year afterwards that the postman, one morning, brought a little registered package for John Welsh. Jack chanced to be at home that morning, and opened the package in considerable surprise, for registered packages were not of common occurrence with him.

“Why, what’s this?” he said, and held up what appeared to be a medal of gold.

“Let’s see it,” said Mary, quickly, and examined it with eager eyes. “Why, look!” she cried. “On one side is a woman holdin’ a wreath, an’ on the other it says ‘To John Welsh, for valour, February 2, 1906.’ It’s from the hayro fund!” she cried. “Jack—”

But Jack, looking very red and uncomfortable, had bolted from the house.

“I does my work,” he muttered angrily to himself, as he strode up the street, “but I ain’t no hayro, an’ what’s more, I won’t be one! What do they mean by sendin’ me a medal? Confound their impudence, anyway. Why can’t they leave a feller alone? I don’t want their old medal!”

But Mary put it carefully away, and it is to this day her dearest treasure, to be shown proudly whenever the story of Jack’s exploit is told—provided, always, that Jack isn’t there!

And the robbers? Conviction followed, as a matter of course. There could be no doubt of their guilt, and in the end they saw the wisdom of confessing and throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court. The madman was consigned to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he remains to this day, occupying for the most part a straitjacket and a padded cell, for he has never recovered from his lust of blood and instinct to murder.