rail and the
denuded cross-ties, don't you see they're out?"

"I see that they are out," replied Marion, "but I do not yet see that
they have been forced out."

She moved a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened. "If
these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we ought to
find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the crossties....
Look!"

The big practical workman suddenly realized what the girl meant.

He stooped over and began to flash his torch along the end of the ties.
We crowded against him. Every one of the spike holes, for the entire
length of the rail, was straight and clean. The man seized one of the
spikes and scrutinized it under his torch.

Then he stood up. For a moment he did not speak. He merely looked at
Marion. "It's the holy truth!" he said. "Somebody pulled these spikes
with a clawbar. That weakened the rail, and she bowed out when the
engine struck her."

Then he turned around, and shouted down the track to his crew. "Hey,
boys! Spread out along the right of way and see if you can't find
a claw-bar. The devils that do these tricks always throw away their
tools."

We stood together in a little tragic group. The old peasant woman came
over to where I stood, she walked with a dead, wooden step. "Contessa,"
she whispered, her old lips against my hand. "You will save him?"

And suddenly with a wild human resentment, I longed to cut a way out of
the trap of this Fatality; to force its ruthless decree into a sort of
equity, if I could do it.

"Yes," I said, "I will save him!"

It was an impulse with no plan behind it. But the dabbing of the
withered mouth on my fingers was like actual physical contact with a
human heart.

For a moment she looked at me as one among the damned might look at
Michael. Then she went slowly away, down through the wooded copse of the
meadow. And I turned about to meet Marion. I knew that she was now after
the identity of the wrecker, and I faced her to foul her lines.

"This is not the work of one with murder in his heart," she said "A
criminal agent set on a ruthless destruction of property and life would
have drawn these spikes on a trestle or an embankment, at a point where
the train would be running at high speed."

She paused for a moment, then she went on speaking to me as though she
merely uttered her mental comment to herself.

"These spikes are drawn at a point where the train slows down for a
crossing and precisely