lingering doubts about the lethal jeopardy of her position.

The vehicle's single headlight had gone out. The bus was racing through the midnight fog in total darkness!

With a scream, Martha turned toward the driver. He sat with a fixed stare, grimly intent, entirely oblivious to everything except the white wall of fog looming up immediately ahead.

With the scream still on her lips, Martha whirled toward the door. It opened. Or perhaps it had been open. She was too terrified to know. But in any case there was the cold white fog streaming past outside.

She hesitated momentarily. It took courage to hurl yourself into that rushing white wall, never knowing exactly what lay beyond it, beneath it--within it.

But some sure instinct warned her that there was no choice. This fearful icy bus racing ahead into the foggy darkness without any lights could come to only one end.

With another wild scream she plunged through the open door into the streamers of fog.

For a second, she was snatched through space in the wake of the midnight bus. Then she struck earth with a thud which seemed to loosen every bone in her body and went bouncing and rolling along the ground like a rag doll hurled aside by an angry child.

She came to rest against a hedge and lay motionless, the taste of wet moldy earth in her mouth. She was still lying there, wondering how many bones she had broken, when a rending crash sounded somewhere ahead in the foggy darkness. She heard the tinkle of falling splinters of glass and then there was silence. Sudden, terrifying silence.

The silence endured, pregnant and somehow horrifying, and she wanted to scream again, but her mouth was full of dirt and screaming was difficult.

A light appeared; someone shouted; and she managed a groan.

A face materialized out of the fog, a kindly, anxious face.

The man bent over her. He spoke soothingly for a moment; he straightened up and called into the fog. "It's a girl, Alica! She's hurt! Bring a blanket! Quickly!"In less than a minute a sturdy woman appeared. The two of them, the man and the woman, slid the blanket under Martha and lifted her up.In another minute she was carried out of the fog into a cozy lighted house and tenderly laid on a couch.While the man telephoned for a doctor, the woman Alica asked Martha where she was 

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