lpers and superintended the
transfer. One of the passengers, an elderly lady who had shown no sign
of grave injury, died smiling courageously as they were lifting her.

It gave Banneker a momentary shock of helpless responsibility. Why
should she have been the one to die? Only five minutes before she had
spoken to him in self-possessed, even tones, saying that her
traveling-bag contained camphor, ammonia, and iodine if he needed them.
She had seemed a reliable, helpful kind of lady, and now she was dead.
It struck Banneker as improbable and, in a queer sense, discriminatory.
Remembering the slight, ready smile with which she had addressed him, he
felt as if he had suffered a personal loss; he would have liked to stay
and work over her, trying to discover if there might not be some spark
of life remaining, to be cherished back into flame, but the burly old
man's decisive "Gone," settled that. Besides, there were other things,
official things to be looked to.

A full report would be expected of him, as to the cause of the accident.
The presence of the boulder in the wreckage explained that grimly. It
was now his routine duty to collect the names of the dead and wounded,
and such details as he could elicit. He went about it briskly,
conscientiously, and with distaste. All this would go to the claim agent
of the road eventually and might serve to mitigate the total of damages
exacted of the company. Vaguely Banneker resented such probable
penalties as unfair; the most unremitting watchfulness could not have
detected the subtle undermining of that fatal boulder. But essentially
he was not interested in claims and damages. His sensitive mind hovered
around the mystery of death; that file of crumpled bodies, the woman of
the stilled smile, the man fondling a limp hand, weeping quietly.
Officially, he was a smooth-working bit of mechanism. As an individual
he probed tragic depths to which he was alien otherwise than by a large
and vague sympathy. Facts of the baldest were entered neatly; but in the
back of his eager brain Banneker was storing details of a far different
kind and of no earthly use to a railroad corporation.

He became aware of some one waiting at his elbow. The lank young man had
spoken to him twice.

"Well?" said Banneker sharply. "Oh, it's you! How did you get back so
soon?"

"Under the hour," replied the other with pride. "Your message has gone.
The operator's a queer duck. Dealing faro. Made me play thro