cted. Going downstairs she found the
news of the wreck had spread about the hotel, and widely exaggerated
accounts of the disaster were being discussed. Mrs. Whitney and Marie
were out sleighriding, and by the time the half hour had passed without
word from Glover, Gertrude gave way to her restlessness. She had a
telegram to send to New York--an order for bonbons--and she determined
to walk down to the Wickiup to send it; she might, she thought, see
Glover and hear his news sooner.

When she approached the headquarters building unusual numbers of
railroad men were grouped on the platform, talking. Messengers hurried
to and from the roundhouse. A blown engine attached to a day coach was
standing near and men were passing in and out of the car. Gertrude
made her way to the stairs unobserved, walked leisurely up to the
telegraph office and sent her message. The long corridors of the
building, gloomy even on bright days, were quite dark as she left the
operators' room and walked slowly toward the quarters of the
construction department.

The door of the large anteroom was open and the room empty. Gertrude
entered hesitatingly and looked toward Glover's office. His door also
was ajar, but no one was within. The sound of voices came from a
connecting room and she at once distinguished Glover's tones. It was
justification: with her coin purse she tapped lightly on the door
casing, and getting no response stepped inside the office and slipped
into a chair beside his desk to await him. The voices came from a room
leading to Callahan's apartments.

Glover was asking questions, and a man whose voice she could now hear
breaking with sobs, was answering. "Are you sure your signals were
right?" she heard Glover ask slowly and earnestly; and again,
patiently, "how could you be doubled up without the flanger's leaving
the track?" Then the man would repeat his story.

"You must have had too much behind you," Glover said once.

"Too much?" echoed the man, frantically. "Seven engines behind us all
day yesterday. Paddy told him the minute he got in the cab she
wouldn't never stand it. He told him it as plain as a man could tell a
man. Then because we went through a thousand feet in the gap like
cheese he ordered us up the hill. When we struck the big drift it was
slicing rock, Mr. Glover. Paddy told him she wouldn't never stand it.
The very first push we let go in a hundred feet with the engine
churning her damned