Yes, I think he is," said Eugene. "No. I haven't anything to offer
him."

"I suppose not," Kinney returned thoughtfully, as he went out. "I don't
know that I would myself. Well, we'll probably see his name in the
papers some day if he stays with that job!"

However, the nitroglycerin expert of whom they spoke did not get into
the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily life
was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has a constant
passion for the incongruous, and it was George's lot to manipulate
wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives in safety, and
to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and inconsequent that it
was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final insult of riding him
down under the wheels of one of those juggernauts at which he had once
shouted "Git a hoss!" Nevertheless, Fate's ironic choice for Georgie's
undoing was not a big and swift and momentous car, such as Eugene
manufactured; it was a specimen of the hustling little type that was
flooding the country, the cheapest, commonest, hardiest little car ever
made.

The accident took place upon a Sunday morning, on a downtown crossing,
with the streets almost empty, and no reason in the world for such a
thing to happen. He had gone out for his Sunday morning walk, and he was
thinking of an automobile at the very moment when the little car struck
him; he was thinking of a shiny landaulet and a charming figure stepping
into it, and of the quick gesture of a white glove toward the chauffeur,
motioning him to go on. George heard a shout but did not look up, for he
could not imagine anybody's shouting at him, and he was too engrossed
in the question "Was it Lucy?" He could not decide, and his lack of
decision in this matter probably superinduced a lack of decision in
another, more pressingly vital. At the second and louder shout he did
look up; and the car was almost on him; but he could not make up his
mind if the charming little figure he had seen was Lucy's and he could
not make up his mind whether to go backward or forward: these questions
became entangled in his mind. Then, still not being able to decide which
of two ways to go, he tried to go both--and the little car ran him down.
It was not moving very rapidly, but it went all the way over George.

He was conscious of gigantic violence; of roaring and jolting and
concussion; of choking clouds of dust, shot with lightning, about his
head; h