Thecoroner's jury was inclined at the time to blame the signalman, but the Board of Trade inquiry established the fact that the accident was due to the engine-driver's neglect to keep a proper lookout. However, as the driver was dead and his fireman with him, the law very leniently took no further action in the matter.
About three o'clock in the morning, as the train was crossing a bleak Yorkshire moor seven miles from Tetley Junction, the curate suddenly left the seat on which he lay stretched dreaming of Eileen and flew across the compartment on to the recumbent form of a stout commercial traveler.Then he rebounded to the floor and woke up—unhurt.
"'Tis an accident, lad!" gasped the commercial traveler as he got his wind.
"So it seems," said the curate. "Hold tight! She's rocking!"
The commercial traveler, who was mechanically groping under the seat for his boots,—commercial travelers always remove their boots in third-class railroad compartments when on night journeys,—followed the curate's advice and braced himself with his feet against the opposite seat for the comingbouleversement.
After the first shock the train had gathered way again—the light engine into which it had charged had been thrown clear off the track—but only for a moment. Suddenly thereeling engine of the express left the rails and staggered drunkenly along the ballast. A moment later it turned over, taking the guard's van and the first four coaches with it, and the whole train came to a standstill.
It was a corridor train, and unfortunately for Gerald Gilmore and the commercial traveler their coach fell over corridor side downward. There was no door on the other side of the compartment—only three windows, crossed by a stout brass bar. These windows had suddenly become sky-lights.
They fought their way out at last. Once he got the window open, the curate experienced little difficulty in getting through; but the commercial traveler was corpulent and tenacious of his boots, which he held persistentlyin one hand while Gerald tugged at the other. Still, he was hauled up at last, and the two slid down the perpendicular roof of the coach to the permanent way.
"That's done, anyway!" panted the drummer; and sitting down he began to put on his boots.
"There's plenty more to do," said the curate grimly, pulling off his coat. "The front of the train is on fire. Come!"
He turned and ran. Almost at his first step he cannoned into a heavy body in rapid motion. It was Excalibur.
"That you, old friend?" observed the curate. "I was on my way to see about you. Now that you are out, you may as well come and bear a hand."
The pair sprinted along the line toward the blazing coaches.
It was dawn—gray, weeping, and cheerless—on Tetley Moor. Another engine had come up from behind to take what was left of the train back to the Junction. Seven coaches, including the lordly sleeping saloon, stood intact; four, with the engine and tender, lay where they had fallen, a mass of charred wood and twisted metal.
A motor car belonging to a doctor stood in the roadway a hundred yards off, and its owner, with a brother of the craft who had been a passenger on the train, was attending to the injured. There were fourteen of these altogether, mostly suffering from burns. These were made as comfortableas possible in sleeping berths their owners had vacated.
"Take your seats, please!" said the surviving guard in a subdued voice. He spoke at the direction of a big man in a heavy overcoat, who appeared to have taken charge of the salvage operations. The passengers clambered up into the train.
Only one hesitated. He was a long, lean young man, black from head to foot with soot and oil. His left arm was badly burned; and seeing a doctor disengaged at last, he came forward to have it dressed.
The big man in the heavy overcoat approached him.
"My name is Caversham," he said. "I happen to be a director of the company. If you will give me your name and address I will see to it thatyour services to-night are suitably recognized. The way you got those two children out of the first coach was splendid, if I may be allowed to say so. We did not even know they were there."
The young man's teeth suddenly flashed out into a white smile against the blackness of his face.
"Neither did I, sir," he said. "Let me introduce you to the responsible party."
He whistled. Out of the gray dawn loomed an eerie monster, badly singed, wagging its tail.
"Scally, old man," said the curate, "this gentleman wants to present you with an illuminated address. Thank him prettily!" Then, to the doctor: "I'm ever so much obliged to you; it's quite comfortable now."
He began stiffly to pull on his coat and waistcoat. Lord Caversham, lending a hand, noted the waistcoat and said quickly:—
"Will you travel in my compartment? I should like to have a word with you if I may."
"I think I had better go and have a look at those poor folks in the sleeper first," replied the curate. "They may require my services professionally."
"At the Junction, then, perhaps?" suggested Lord Caversham.
At the Junction, however, the curate found a special waiting to proceed north by a loop line; and, being in no mind to receive compliments or waste his substance on a hotel, he departed forthwith, taking his charred confederate, Excalibur, with him.
Fortune, once she takes a fancy to you, is not readily shaken off, however, as most successful men are always trying to forget. A fortnight later Lord Caversham, leaving his hotel in a great northern town, encountered an acquaintance he had no difficulty whatever in recognizing.
It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tramcars—he had not yet shaken down to town life—submitting to a painful but effective process of extraction at the hands of a posse of policemen and tram conductors, shrilly directed by a small but commanding girl of the lodging-house-drudge variety.
When this enterprise had beenbrought to a successful conclusion and the congested traffic moved on by the overheated policemen, Lord Caversham crossed the street and tapped the damsel on the shoulder.
"Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?" he inquired politely.
"Yas. Se'nty-one Pilgrim Street. But 'e won't sell him."
"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"
"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."
"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my car?"
After that Mary Ellen's mind became an incoherent blur. A stately limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and Excaliburwas stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was much too dazed to converse with him.
The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of Mary Ellen's life.
Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:—
"If you really mean it, sir—"
"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have forgiven the company."
"Well, sir, since you say that, you—well, you could do me a service. Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet—I'm notasking for an incumbency; any old curacy would do—a billet I could marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I—we have been waiting a long time now."
There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:—
"What are you getting at present?"
"A hundred and twenty a year."
This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato manner:—
"How much do you want?"
"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would enable me to make her a lot morecomfortable," said the curate wistfully.
The great man surveyed him silently—wonderingly, too, if the curate had known. Presently he asked:
"Afraid of hard work?"
"No work is hard to a man with a wife and a home of his own," replied the curate with simple fervor.
Lord Caversham smiled grimly. He had more homes of his own than he could conveniently live in, and he had been married three times; but even he found work hard now and then.
"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon. I should like to be introduced to your fiancée some day."
A trampopened the rectory gate and shambled up the neat gravel walk toward the house. Taking a short cut through the shrubbery he emerged suddenly on a little lawn.
On the lawn a lady was sitting in a basket chair beside a perambulator, the occupant of which was slumbering peacefully. A small but intensely capable nursemaid, prone on the grass in a curvilinear attitude, was acting as tunnel to a young gentleman of three who was impersonating a locomotive.
The tramp approached the group and asked huskily for alms. He was a burly and unpleasant specimen of his class—a class all too numerouson the outskirts of the great industrial parish of Smeltingborough. The lady in the basket chair looked up.
"The rector is out," she said. "If you go into the town you will find him at the Church Hall and he will investigate your case."
"Oh, the rector is out, is he?" repeated the tramp in tones of distinct satisfaction.
"Yes," said Eileen.
The tramp advanced another pace.
"Give us half a crown!" he said. "I haven't had a bite of food since yesterday, lady—nor a drink neither," he added humorously.
"Please go away!" said the lady. "You know where to find the rector."
The tramp smiled unpleasantly, but made no attempt to move.
"You refuse to go away?" the lady said.
"I'll go for half a crown," replied the tramp with the gracious air of one anxious to oblige a lady.
"Watch baby for a moment, Mary Ellen," said Eileen.
She rose and disappeared into the house, followed by the gratified smile of the tramp. He was a reasonable man and knew that ladies did not wear pockets.
"Thirsty weather," he remarked affably.
Mary Ellen, keeping one hand on the shoulder of Master Gerald Caversham Gilmore and the other on the edge of the baby's perambulator, merely chuckled sardonically.
The next moment there were footsteps round the corner of the houseand Eileen reappeared. She was clinging with both hands to the collar of an enormous dog. Its tongue lolled from its great jaws; its tail waved menacingly from side to side; its great limbs were bent as though for a spring. Its eyes were half closed as though to focus the exact distance.
"Run!" cried Eileen to the tramp. "I can't hold him in much longer!"
This was true enough, except that when Eileen said "in" she meant "up." But the tramp did not linger to discuss grammar. There was a scurry of feet, the gate banged and he was gone.
With a sigh of relief Eileen let go of Excalibur's collar. Excalibur promptly collapsed on the grass and went to sleep again.