The Scarlet Plague (Illustrated)

THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a
railroad. But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on
either side swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested
across it in a green wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow
as a man’s body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway.
Occasionally, a piece of rusty iron, showing through the forestmould,
advertised that the rail and the ties still remained. In one
place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at a connection, had lifted the
end of a rail clearly into view. The tie had evidently followed the rail,
held to it by the spike long enough for its bed to be filled with gravel
and rotten leaves, so that now the crumbling, rotten timber thrust
itself up at a curious slant. Old as the road was, it was manifest that
it had been of the mono-rail type.