you in such cases to lie down flat on the
floor, I trembled to think of the paralysed
victims of such a theoretical folly.

Now we were all safe, some of us began to
grow cheerful, wishing to remove the ladies'
fear.  A young barrister who was near me,
proposed, if we were kept many hours waiting, to
attack the luggage-van, and distribute the
barrels of oysters among the hungry passengers.
Others asked the guards at what o'clock the
next collision would take place.  I believe we
were all grateful to God for our escape.  We must
have been scarcely human if we had not been;
but the mind, when overstrained, finds comfort
in such relief, and so, to the end of the world,
droll witnesses at murder trials and odd events
at the reading of wills must produce an
irresistible laugh.

While we were waiting for the express
engine laden with navvies from London, and
for help from Farnborough, I strolled away
from the reassured passengers through a side
gate, to which a farmer's gig was tied, and
walked along the quiet country road, enjoying
the calm fresh sunlight and the bright chill
November blue air.

It was humiliating to man, the monarch
of the universe, to see what little effect the
all but death of some two hundred human
beings had caused the animal and vegetable
kingdom of Fleet Pond, near Farnborough. The
white cows were feeding leisurely and untroubled
in the meadows, the rooks were tossing about
over the heath, the sparrows were visiting from
tree to tree, and the dead leaves were fistling in
troops down the lanes as if returning gay, in
companies, from the funeral of Summer. And
there, where the beech shone red, and the few birch
leaves, dry, and yellow, and wrinkled, were wet
and golden with the morning dew, I could hear
a farmer pulling up his gig on the crown of the
red-brick railway arch, just above where the
trains' smoke had blackened it, discoursing as
an eye-witness of the late collision or duel of
the trains.  Thus he put it to the friend he met,
pointing with a shake of his fat head at the
wreck.  I was a long way from him, but I have
the keen, practised ears of a hunter, and the air
was clear and resonant, so, putting my head on
one side, I caught it all as in a net:

"Lookun here, Friend Jackson, I was just
crossing this bridge when th' express passed,
and by the time I got up to you, where the lady
and children are coming, I sees the other train
on same line. I knew there would be something
happen, so I push the old mare to a gallop and
got up just as ur run into un."

He was not a graphic man, and seemed to
have no further thought of the accident.

One thing was quite apparent, and formed
my moral of the affair:—that it was the
universal custom in collisions to hush up
everything as much and as soon as possible. The
broken iron was spirited away, the doors of the
carriages where the floors were crushed were
closed, the bruised persons led away, the ruins
patched up, and the earth smoothed over the
might-have-been grave as craftily and quickly as
possible.  Every moment the memory of the
guards became more and more indifferent.  A fog
every moment opaquer rose between us and the
accident.  No one was hurt, nothing was injured.
The engine, worth two thousand pounds, was a
trifle, and might be repaired. The stoker was
unharmed. The line would soon be cleared. We
should soon be on to Basingstoke, where the
Salisbury train was waiting us.  It was no one's
fault; no guard present had ever been in more
than two collisions before.  The head porter at
Farnborough thought it better not to speak; it
was "not his place, you know," and the
company did not like speaking. You never, from
anybody, could have gathered that we, the
express train, had run into a goods train that
ought not to have been on the line, that they were
shunting to get out of our way a bad ten minutes
too late; and lastly, that danger signals, both at
station and on train, if up, had been utterly
useless, and had been disregarded. One would
really never have thought that two hundred
Englishmen had just been driven over a place of
graves and escaped by a miracle.

The next morning, as I sat at a quiet rectory
window in Wiltshire, I opened the Times and
read the following:

FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT ON THE LONDON AND
SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.—An accident of a very
alarming character, and which might have been
attended by a most fearful sacrifice of human life,
occurred on Tuesday at mid-day at the Fleetpond
station of the London and South-Western Railway.
It appears that the 11 A.M. express train left the
Waterloo terminus at the fixed time, and proceeded
with safety, notwithstanding the density of the fog
which prevailed, until within a few miles of its first
stoppage, Basingstoke, where it was due at 12.15.
The Fleetpond station is a very small place, and the
officials there having a goods train in charge
proceeded to shunt it, in order to allow the express train
to pass.  To prevent any accident the usual signals
were displayed at the station and by the goods train,
but it would appear that, owing to the fog or some
other cause, the driver of the express train could not
see them; nor were the men at the station aware of
the approach of that train, for without any warning
the express rushed through past the station at a
rapid rate, and crushed the back portion of the goods
train. The collision was most fearful, and it is
nothing short of a miracle that the lives of a large
number of people were not sacrificed.  The locomotive
belonging to the express train—a very magnificent
engine, worth upwards of £ 2000 was almost
broken to pieces; the tender and guard's van of the
express train were also destroyed, as were likewise a
number of the trucks belonging to the goods train.
The shrieks of the passengers were awful, and it was
feared at first that several were killed; as soon,
however, as the first shock was over an investigation
was made, and it was found that, although the
passengers had received a terrible shaking, and several
were more or less bruised, yet no loss of life had
occurred.  It may be a matter of surprise how the
driver and stoker of the train escaped with their
lives, considering that the engine was destroyed; but
we are informed that these two men, on seeing the
imminent danger they were in, threw themselves