"
"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.
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