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“It was a clean accident, then, you think?” said Marion.

“Sure, Miss Warfield,” replied the man. “If anybody had tried to move that rail out of alignment, he would have to disconnect it at the other end, that is, take off the plate that joins it to the next rail. That would leave the end of the rail clean, with no broken plate. But the end of the rail is bent and the plate is twisted off. We looked at that the first thing. Nobody could twist that plate off. The engine did it when it left the track.

“You see, Miss Warfield, the weight of the engine, like a wedge, simply forced one of these rails out of alignment. Don’t you understand how a hundred ton wedge driven against the track, at the start of an upgrade, could do it?”

The old peasant woman stood behind the track boss. The thing was a sort of awful game. She did not speak, but the vicissitudes of the inquiry advanced her, or retired her, with the effect of points, won or lost.

“I understand perfectly,” replied Marion, “how the impact of the heavy engine might drive both rails out of alignment, if they offered an equal resistance, or one of them out if it offered a less resistance. This is straight track. The wedge would go in even. It should have spread the rails equally. That’s the probable thing. But instead it did the improbable thing; it spread one. I hold the improbable thing always in question. Human knowledge is built up on that postulate.

“True, a certain factor of difference in conditions must be allowed, as I have said, but an excessive factor cannot be allowed. We have got to find it, or discard human reason as an implement for getting at the truth.”

Again the big track boss smashed through the niceties of logic.

“These things happen all the time, Miss Warfield. You can’t figure it out.”

“One ought to be able to determine it,”‘ replied the girl.

The track boss shook his head.

“We can’t tell what made that rail give.”

“Of course, we can tell,” said Marion. “It gave because it was weakened.”

“But what weakened it?” replied the man. “You can’t tell that? The rail’s sound.”

“There could be only two causes,” said Marion. “It was either weakened by a natural agency or a human agency.”

The track boss made an annoyed gesture, like a practical person vexed with the refinements of a theorist.

“But how are you going to tell?”

“Now,” said Marion, “there is always a point as you follow a thing down, where the human design in it must appear, if there is a human design in it. The human mind can falsify events within a limited area. But if one keeps moving out, as from a center, he will find somewhere this point at which intelligence is no longer able to imitate the aspect of the result of natural forces . . . I think we have reached it.”

She paused and drove her query at the track boss.

“The spikes on the outside of this rail held it in place, did they not?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield.”

“Did the impact of the engine force these spikes out of the ties?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield, it forced them out.”

“How do you know it forced them out?”

“Well, Miss Warfield,” said the man, pointing to the 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.