The old man pushed his satchel aside, pulled his chair closer to the
table, cleared his throat, and began:--

"It was May 13, 1859. I'd been out in the country at my son's, and was
riding into the city in the evening. I was in the smoking-car. Along
about nine o'clock there was a sudden jerk, then half a dozen more
jerks, and the train came to a dead stop. I got up and went out with
the rest, and we then saw that the bridge had broken down, and the
three cars behind the smoker had tumbled into the creek. I hurried
down the bank and did what I could to help those in the wreck, but it
was very dark and the cars were piled up in a heap, and it was hard to
do anything. Then the fire broke out and we had to stand back. But I
heard a child crying by a broken window, just where the middle car had
struck across the rear one, and I climbed up there at the risk of my
life and looked in. The fire gave some light by this time, and I saw
a young woman lying there, caught between the timbers and perfectly
still. A sudden blaze showed me that she was dead. Then the child
cried again; I saw where he was, and reached in and pulled him out
just as the fire caught in his cloak. I jumped down into the water
with him, and put out the fire and saved him. He wasn't hurt much. It
was your boy Ralph. By this time the wreck was all ablaze and we had
to get up on the bank.

"I took the child around among the people there, and tried to find
out who he belonged to, but no one seemed to know anything about him.
He wasn't old enough to talk distinctly, so he couldn't tell me much
about himself; not anything, in fact, except that his name was Ralph.
I took him home with me to my lodgings in the city that night, and
the next morning I went out to the scene of the accident to try to