“Certainly,” said the boy. “How else could it have happened?”
“I don’t know. But neither can I understand how you could have overlooked it if you were at all careful. There are only three others on the hook.”
“I wasn’t as careful as I should have been,” said Allan in a low voice, “that’s certain.”
He was sure that he, and he only, had been at fault. Any other explanation seemed ridiculous.
“Did Nevins say anything about this train when you came on duty?” pursued the trainmaster.
Allan made a mighty effort at recollection.
“No,” he said, at last; “I’m sure he didn’t. We talked a moment about the special, and he spoke of the heavy day’s work he’d had. That was all. If he’d said he had an order for it, I certainly shouldn’t have forgotten it right away.”
“Then Nevins broke the rules, too,” said Mr. Schofield, and got out his book of rules. “The second paragraph on page seventy-six reads as follows: ‘When both day and night operators are employed, one must not leave his post until relieved by the other, and the one going off duty must inform the one coming on respecting unfinished business and the position of trains.’”
“He waited until I had looked over the orders,” said Allan, with a lively remembrance of Nevins’s attitude toward that particular rule. “He supposed that I could read, and if there was anything I didn’t understand I’d have asked him.”