CHAPTER III.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH One moment the even throbbing of the engine as the train slipped along through the silence of the country-side--the next, and the silence was split by a shattering roar and the shock of riven plates, the clash of iron driven against iron, and of solid woodwork grinding and grating as it splintered into wreckage.
Diana, suddenly--horribly--awake, found herself hurled from her seat.
Absolute darkness lapped her round; it was as though a thick black curtain had descended, blotting out the whole world, while from behind it, immeasurably hideous in that utter night, uprose an inferno of cries and shrieks--the clamour of panic-stricken humanity.
Her hands, stretched stiffly out in front of her to ward off she knew not what impending horror hidden by the dark, came in contact with the framework of the window, and in an instant she was clinging to it, pressing up against it with her body, her fingers gripping and clutching at it as a rat, trapped in a well, claws madly at a projecting bit of stonework.

It was at least something solid out of that awful void.
"What's happened?
What's happened?
What's happened ?" She was whispering the question over and over again in a queer, whimpering voice without the remotest idea of what she was saying.

When a stinging pain shot through her arm, as a jagged point of broken glass bit into the flesh, and with a scream of utter, unreasoning terror she let go her hold.
The next moment she felt herself grasped and held by a pair of arms, and a voice spoke to her out of the darkness.
"Are you hurt?
.

.

.