As nearly as he could judge he had come
out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration
he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish small
dots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew these
dots must be men.

A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. He
faced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north,
moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps.
Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on the
edges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time within
twelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulses
normally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcar
flashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle.

But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted his
hastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to these
overalled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slid
out of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcar
was a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big,
wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising and
falling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fade
away and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against his
judgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one of
the blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and come
fluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, starting
doggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried it
along died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front of
him. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of that
morning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:
"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision."

Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheet
flat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring
captions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a great
bound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, he
bounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there with
the paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps while
the chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running
through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was