.

She went on.

"But Clinton says the public is as just as Daniel. If he has an accident
in the ordinary course of affairs the public will hold him for it. But
if anything should happen that he could not help, the public will not
hold him responsible."

I realized the force of that. What reasonable human care could prevent
he must answer for, but the outrage of a criminal would not be taken in
the public mind against him. On the contrary, the sympathy of the public
would flow in. When the people feel that a man is making every effort
for their welfare, the criminal act of an outsider brings them over
wholly to his support. Profound interest carried Marion off her feet.

"I was in a panic the other day, and Clinton said, 'Don't let rotten
luck get your goat. I'm done if an engineer runs by a block, but nothing
else can put it over on me'!"

She laughed with me at the direct, virile idiom of young America in
action.

An event interrupted the discourse. The motor took a sharp curve and a
young man running across the road suddenly flung himself face down in
the grass beyond the curb.

"Is he hurt?" said Marion to the chauffeur.

"No, Miss, he's hiding, Miss," said the man, and we swept out of sight.

I thought it more likely that the creature was in liquor. In spite
of the great country-houses, it was not good hunting-ground for the
criminal class, during the season when everybody was about. The very
number of servants, when a place is open, in a rather effective way,
police it. Besides the young man looked like a sort of workman. One gets
such impressions at a glance.

The motor descended the long hill toward the river and the flat valley.
It hummed into the curves and hollows, through the pockets of chill air,
and out again into the soft September night.

Then finally it swept out into the flat valley, and stopped with a grind
of the emergency brake that caused the wheels to skid, ripping up
the dust and gravel. For a moment in the jar and confusion we did not
realize what had happened, then we saw a great locomotive lying on its
side, and a line of Pullmans, sunk to the axles in the soft earth.

The whole "Montreal Express" was derailed, here in the flat land at the
grade crossing. The thing had been done some time. The fire had been
drawn from the engine; there was only a sputtering of steam. The
passengers had been removed. A wrecking-car had come up from down the
line. A telegrapher was setting up a li