ate would be mourning a small
but quite observable decline in profits. And that would be literally
all. Perhaps the old gentleman thought something of the sort, for he
looked melancholy enough as he pulled his bare, grey head back into the
carriage, and the train smoked under the bridge, and forth, with ever
quickening speed, across the mingled heaths and woods of the New Forest.

Not many hundred yards beyond Browndean, however, a sudden jarring of
brakes set everybody's teeth on edge, and there was a brutal stoppage.
Morris Finsbury was aware of a confused uproar of voices, and sprang to
the window. Women were screaming, men were tumbling from the windows on
the track, the guard was crying to them to stay where they were; at the
same time the train began to gather way and move very slowly backward
toward Browndean; and the next moment, all these various sounds were
blotted out in the apocalyptic whistle and the thundering onslaught of
the down express.

The actual collision Morris did not hear. Perhaps he fainted. He had a
wild dream of having seen the carriage double up and fall to pieces like
a pantomime trick; and sure enough, when he came to himself, he was
lying on the bare earth and under the open sky. His head ached savagely;
he carried his hand to his brow, and was not surprised to see it red
with blood. The air was filled with an intolerable, throbbing roar,
which he expected to find die away with the return of consciousness; and
instead of that it seemed but to swell the louder and to pierce the more
cruelly through his ears. It was a raging, bellowing thunder, like a
boiler-riveting factory.

And now curiosity began to stir, and he sat up and looked about him. The
track at this point ran in a sharp curve about a wooded hillock; all of
the near side was heaped with the wreckage of the Bournemouth train;
that of the express was mostly hidden by the trees; and just at the
turn, under clouds of vomiting steam and piled about with cairns of
living coal, lay what remained of the two engines, one upon the other.
On the heathy margin of the line were many people running to and fro,
and crying aloud as they ran, and many others lying motionless like
sleeping tramps.

Morris suddenly drew an inference. "There has been an accident!" thought
he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the same time his eye
lighted on John, who lay close by as white as paper. "Poor old John!
poor old cove!" he thought, the sch