CCIDENT.

Years passed away--as years inevitably must--and many important changes
took place in the circumstances and the management of the Grand National
Trunk Railway, but the results of that terrible accident did not quickly
pass away. As we have said, it cost Will Garvie an arm, and nearly cost
Mrs Marrot her life. We have much pleasure, however, in recording,
that it did not make the full charge in this matter. A small, a very
small modicum of life was left in that estimable woman, and on the
strength of that, with her wonted vigour of character and invincibility
of purpose, she set to work to draw out, as it were, a new lease of
life. She succeeded to admiration, so much so, in fact, that but for
one or two scars on her countenance, no one could have known that she
had come by an accident at all. Bob Marrot was wont to say of her, in
after years, that, "if it had bin his mother who had lost an arm instead
of Will Garvie, he was convinced that her firmness, amountin' a'most to
obstinacy, of purpose, would have enabled her to grow on a noo arm as
good as the old 'un, if not better." We need scarcely add that Bob was
an irreverent scamp!

Poor Will Garvie! his was a sad loss, yet, strange to say, he rejoiced
over it. "W'y, you see," he used to say to Bob Marrot--Bob and he being
great and confidential friends--"you see, Bob, if it hadn't bin for that
accident, I never would have bin laid up and brought so low--so very
nigh to the grave--and I would never have know'd what it was to be
nursed by your sister too; and so my eyes might have never bin opened to
half her goodness an' tenderness, d'ye see? No, Bob, I don't grudge
havin' had my eyes opened by the loss of an arm; it was done cheap at
the price. Of course I know Loo pretty well by this time, for a few
years of married life is apt to clear a good deal of dust out of one's
eyes, but I do assure you, Bob, that I never _could_ have know'd her
properly but for that accident, which was the luckiest thing that ever
happened to me; an' then, don't 'ee see, I'm just as able to work these
there points with one arm as with two."

To which Bob would reply,--"You're a queer fish, Bill; howsever, every
man's got a right to his own opinions."

Will Garvie was a pointsman now. On recovering from his prolonged
illness, during which he had been supported out of the Provident Fund of
the railway--to which he and all the other men on the line contributed--
he was put