"Well, no. I don't think he had done that. He is a sober man. It is a case of carelessness: nothing else. They go driving on, full pelt, never looking at the signals. On these quiet lines of rail, where there's not much traffic, the danger signal is not exhibited for weeks together. They get accustomed to see the other, and it becomes to them so much a matter of course that it must be there, that they forget to look at it at all. That, in my opinion, must have been the cause of last night's work, and I see no other possible way of accounting for it."
He turned back to the station as he spoke, and a gentleman, who had drawn near, held out his hand to greet the Lakes and the Jupps. It was Colonel West, an acquaintance who resided at Coombe Dalton.
"Oh, colonel," exclaimed one of the young ladies, "what a shocking accident this has been!"
"Ay, it has. Seven picked up dead, and four more gone this morning; besides legs, and arms, and backs broken. It is awful to think of."
"And all from one man's recklessness!" added Mr. Lake, with more severity, more feeling, than he generally suffered himself to display. "As the stationmaster says, they'll not be brought to their senses, these drivers, until some of them are convicted of wilful murder. I hope the man who drove the train last night will get his deserts."
The spectators generally, including Oliver Jupp, had strolled off in the wake of the stationmaster, he being the one from whom most news was to be expected, and their curiosity was craving for it. Colonel West, a keen, sensible man of fifty, brought himself to an anchor before Mr. Lake, touching him on the waistcoat to command attention.
"Let me disabuse your mind, at any rate. I hear they are putting the blame on the driver; but he does not deserve it, and they must be doing it to screen themselves. I know nothing of the man; I never saw him in my life until this morning; but I shall stand between him and injustice."
"In what way? what do you mean?" Mr. Lake inquired.
"They say at the station here that they exhibited the danger signal, red, and that the train dashed on regardless of it," said Colonel West. "I went to the inn this morning where some of the wounded are lying, and there I found the driver--as they told me he was--on a mattress on the floor. 'How did this happen?' I said to him. 'I don't know how it happened, sir,' he replied; 'but I declare there was no red signal up to stop me; the green light was up as usual.' That was the first I had heard about the red light," continued the colonel; "but I find the man said true, and that the whole blame is laid upon him. Now it happens that I was in my garden last night when the smash came, just over on the other side of the line, and I can bear the man's assertion out. It was the green light that was up, and not the red."
"Shameful!" exclaimed Mr. Lake, rising up at once against the injustice in his impulsive way. "I hope, colonel, you will stand by the man."