Then I remember being in
motion, being dragged and carried a long way. They took me up a steep,
short slope, and set me down near the top. I knew that was the railroad
embankment, and I thought they meant to lay me across the track, but it
didn't occur to them, I suppose--they are not familiar with melodrama--and
a long time after that I felt and heard a great banging and rattling under
me and all about me, and it came to me that they had disposed of me by
hoisting me into an empty freight-car. The odd part of it was that the car
wasn't empty, for there were two men already in it, and I knew them by
what they said to me.
"They were the two shell-men who cheated Hartley Bowlder, and they weren't
vindictive; they even seemed to be trying to help me a little, though
perhaps they were only stealing my clothes, and maybe they thought for
them to do anything unpleasant would be superfluous; I could see that they
thought I was done for, and that they had been hiding in the car when I
was put there. I asked them to try to call the train men for me, but they
wouldn't listen, or else I couldn't make myself understood. That's all.
The rest is a blur. I haven't known anything more until those surgeons
were here. Please tell me how long ago it happened. I shall not die, I
think; there are a good many things I want to know about.
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