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 left the rails.  One saw instantly that the thing happened precisely as the workman explained it.  When the heavy engine struck the up-grade, the rails had spread, the wheels had gone down on the cross-ties, and the whole train was derailed.

I saw it with a sickening realization of the fact.

Marion took the workman’s torch and went over the short piece of track on which the thing had happened.  All the evidences of the accident were within a short distance.  The track was not torn up when the thing began.  There was only the displaced rail pushed away, and the plow marks of the wheels on the ties.  The spread rails had merely switched the train off the track onto the level of the highway roadbed into the flat field.

Marion and the workman had gone a little way down the track.  I was quite alone at the point of accident, when suddenly some one caught my hand.

I was so startled that I very nearly screamed.  The thing happened so swiftly, with no word.

There behind me was a woman, an old foreign woman, a peasant from some land of southern Europe.  She had my hand huddled up to her mouth.

And she began to speak, bending her aged body, and with every expression of respect.

“Ah, Contessa, he is not do it, my Umberto.  He is run away in fear to hide in the Barrington quarry.  It is accident.  It is the doing of the good God.  Ah, Contessa,” and her old lips dabbed against my hand.  “I beg him to not go, but he is discharge; an’ he make the threat like the great fool.  Ah, Contessa, Contessa,” and she went over the words with absurd repetition, “believe it is by chance, believe it is the doing of the good God, I pray you.”  And so she ran on in her quaint old-world words.

Instantly I remembered the man lying by the roadside, and the threats of discharged workmen.

I told her the thing was a clean accident, and tried to show her how it came about.  She was effusive in gratitude for my belief.  But she seemed concerned about Marion and the others.  She did not go away; she went over and sat down beside the track.