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.
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