Presently the others returned.  They were so engrossed that they did not notice my adventure or the aged woman seated on the ground.

Marion was putting questions to the workman.

“There was no obstruction on the track?”

“No, Miss.”

“The engineer was watching?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield, he had to slow up and be careful about the crossing.  There is no curve on this grade, he could see every foot of the way.  The track was clear and in place, and he was watching it.  There was nothing on it. — The rails simply spread under the weight of the engine.”

And he began to comment on the excessive size and weight of the huge modern passenger engine.

“The brute drove the rails apart,” he said, “that’s all there is to it.”

“Was the track in repair?” said Marion.

“It was patrolled to-day, Miss, and it was all in shape.”

Then he repeated: 

“The big engine just pushed the rails out.”

“But the road is built for this type of engine,” said Marion.

“Yes, Miss Warfield,” replied the man, “it’s supposed to be, but every roadbed gets a spread rail sometimes.”

Then he added: 

“It has to be mighty solid to hold these hundred ton engines on the rails at sixty miles an hour.”

“It does hold them,” said Marion.

“Yes, Miss Warfield, usually,” said the man.

“Then why should it fail here?”

The man’s big grimy face wrinkled into a sort of smile.

“Now, Miss Warfield,” he said, “if we knew why an accident was likely to happen at one place more than another we wouldn’t have any wrecks.”

“Precisely,” replied Marion, “but isn’t it peculiar that the track should spread at the synclinal of this grade with the train running at a reduced speed, when it holds on the synclinal of other grades with the train running at full speed?”

The man’s big face continued to smile.

“All accidents are peculiar, Miss Warfield; that’s what makes them accidents.”

“But,” said Marion, “is not the aspect of these peculiarities indicatory of either a natural event or one designed by a human intelligence?”

The man fingered his torch.

“Mighty strange things happen, Miss Warfield.  I’ve seen a train go over into a canal and one coach lodge against a tree that was standing exactly in the right place to save it.  And I’ve seen a passenger engine run by a signal and through a block and knock a single car out of a passing freight-train, at a crossing, and that car be the very one that the freight train’s brakeman had just reached on his way to the caboose; just like somebody had timed it all, to the second, to kill him.  And I’ve seen a whole wreck piled up, as high as a house, on top of a man, and the man not scratched.”

“I do not mean the coincidence of accident,” said Marion, “that is a mystery beyond us; what I mean is that there must be an organic difference in the indicatory signs of a thing as it happens in the course of nature, and as it happens by human arrangement.”