“I knew it was coming,” assented Lease. “I watched it come along, standing by the side of Mr. Watson. If I had not set the points right, why, I should have thought surely of them then; it stands to reason I should. But never such a thought came into my mind, sir. I waited there, just as if all was right; and I believe I did shift the points.”
Lease did not put this forth as an excuse: he only spoke aloud the problem that was working in his mind. Having shifted the points regularly for five years, it seemed simply impossible that he could have neglected it now. And yet the man could not remember to have done it this evening.
“You can’t call it to mind?” said Squire Todhetley, repeating his last words.
“No, I can’t, sir: and no wonder, with all this confusion around me and the distress I’m in. I may be able to do so to-morrow.”
“Now look you here, Lease,” said the Squire, getting just a little cross: “if you had put the points right you couldn’t fail to remember it. And what causes your distress, I should like to ask, but the knowledge that you didn’t, and that all this wreck is owing to you?”
“There is such a thing as doing things mechanically, sir, without the mind being conscious of it.”
“Doing things wilfully,” roared the Squire. “Do you want to tell me I am a fool to my face?”
“It has often happened, sir, that when I have wound up the mantel-shelf clock at night in our sleeping-room, I’ll not know the next minute whether I’ve wound it or not, and I have to try it again, or else ask the wife,” went on Lease, looking straight out into the darkness, as if he could see the clock then. “I can’t think but what it must have been just in that way that I put the points right to-night.”
Squire Todhetley, in his anger, which was growing hot again, felt that he should like to give Lease a sound shaking. He had no notion of such talk as this.