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

The Wrong Box