ttle instrument on a box by the
roadside. A lineman was climbing a pole to connect his wire. A track
boss with a torch and a crew of men were coming up from an examination
of the line littered with its wreck.

I hardly know what happened in the next few minutes. We were out of the
motor and among the men almost before the car stopped.

No one had been hurt. The passenger-coaches were not turned over, and
the engineer and fireman had jumped as the cab toppled. By the greatest
good fortune the train had gone off the track in this low flat land
almost level with the grade. Several things joined to avoid a terrible
disaster; the flat ground that enabled the whole train to plow along
upright until it stopped, the track lying flush with the highway where
the engine went off, and the fact that trains must slow up for this
grade crossing. Had there been an embankment, or a big ditch, or the
train under its usual headway the wreck would have been a horror, for
every wheel, from the engine to the last coach, had left the rails.

We were an excited group around the train's crew, when the trackman
came up with his torch. Everybody asked the same question as the man
approached.

"What caused the accident?"

"Spread rails," he said. "These big brutes," he pointed to the mammoth
engine sprawling like a child's top on its side, the gigantic wheels
in the air, "and these new steel coaches, are awful heavy. There's an
upgrade here. When they struck it, they just spread out the rails."

And he pushed his closed hands out before him, slowly apart, in
illustration.

The man knew Marion, for he spoke directly to her in reply to our
concerted query. Then he added "If you step down the track, Miss
Warfield, I'll show you exactly how it happened."

We followed the big workman with his torch. Marion walked beside him,
and I a few steps behind. The girl had been plunged, on the instant,
headlong into the horror she feared, into the ruin that she had lain
awake over--and yet she met it with no sign, except that grim stiffening
of the figure that disaster brings to persons of courage. She gave no
attention to her exquisite gown. It was torn to pieces that night; my
own was a ruin. The crushing effect of this disaster swept out every
trivial thing.

In a moment we saw how the accident happened, the workman lighting the
sweep of track with his torch. Here were the plow marks on the wooden
cross ties, where the wheels had run after they lef