'I think, if you know what's good for you, you will steer clear of what you call an education. I think I should stick to rubber tires, and a few comfortable certainties—and peace.'

Mr. Squem stared. 'How's that?' he inquired. 'Education is your line, you were saying, and yet you queer your stuff. I'd get quick word from the house, if I handled Mercury tires that way.'

'But you wouldn't,' rejoined Professor Browne, 'you wouldn't, because tires mean something. Tires are your life-preserver—they are shaped like life-preservers, aren't they?'

'You've got me going,' said Mr. Squem, 'and no mistake. I don't mind telling you I'd hoped to get some hunch from you—on education. You see, my clothes are right, I always have a room with bath, and I get two hundred a month and fifty on the side. I read the papers—and the magazine section on Sunday—and I got through four books last year. And yet there's something not there—by Keefer, not there! I'd give something to get it there—to slide it under, somehow, and bring the rest of me up to regular manicuring and ice-cream forks and the way my clothes fit!'

Mr. Squem was interrupted in the expression of this craving. There was a tremendous jar; the car tore and bumped with an immense pounding over the ties, then careened and sprawled down a short bank and settled on its side. People who have been through such an experience will require no description. To others none can be given. In the bedlam chaos and jumble, and chorus of shrieks and smashing glass, Professor Browne, struggling up through the bodies which had been hurled upon him, was conscious of a pain almost intolerably sharp in his leg, and then of a sort of striped whirlwind which seemed to be everywhere at once, extricating, calming, ordering, comforting—and swearing. It was like a machine-gun:—

'Keep your clothes on, nothing's going to bite you—just a little shake-up—Yes, chick, we'll find your ma—No, you don't climb over those people; sit down or I'll help you—To hell with your valise, pick up that child!—There go the axes; everybody quiet now, just where he is—You with the side-whiskers get back, back, hear me!—Now, children first, hand 'em along—women next, so—men last—Why didn't you say you was a doctor? Get out there quick; some of those people have got broke and need you!'

Professor Browne was one of these last. Lifted by Peter Squem and a very scared brakeman, he lay on two Pullman mattresses at the side of the track, waiting for the rabbit-faced country doctor to reach him. He was suffering very much,—it seemed to him that he had never really known pain before,—but his attention went to a white-haired lady near by—a slight, slender woman, with breeding written all over her. She had made her way from the drawing-room of the Pullman, and leaned heavily upon her maid, in a state approaching collapse. Professor Browne was impressed by her air of distinction even in the midst of his pain. Then he saw a striped arm supportingly encircle her, and a hand dominated by an enormous seal ring press to her lips an open bottle of Scotch.

'Let it trickle down, auntie—right down. It's just what you need,' said Peter B. Squem.

'What did you think of when the car stopped rolling?'

Professor Browne, lying in his bed, asked this question of Mr. Squem, sitting at its side. The latter had got the professor home to his house and his housekeeper after the accident the day before, had found the best surgeon in town and stood by while he worked, had in a dozen ways helped a bad business to go as well as possible, and now, having remained over night, was awaiting the hour of his train.