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."
The trackman was a person accustomed to the reality and not the
theory of things.
"I don't see how the accident would have been any different," he
said, "if somebody had put that tree in the right spot to catch
the coach; or timed the minute with a stop-watch to kill that
brakeman; or piled that wreck on the man so it wouldn't hurt him.
The result would have been just the same."
"The result would have been the same," replied Marion, "but the
arrangement of events would have been different."
"Just what way different, Miss Warfield?" said the man.
"We cannot formulate an iron rule about that," replied Marion,
"but as a general thing catastrophes in nature seem to lack a
motive, and their contributing events are not forced."
The big trackman was a person of sound practical sense.
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