Several of the passengers whose injuries were only very slight were discussing the accident in an animated manner, and, as usual in such cases, many wild and fanciful conjectures were passed about as truth. At last one said:—
"Does anyone know the rights of the matter?"
"Yes, I do," volunteered a young man with an arm in a sling; and Margraf lay silently listening, unable to move or speak.
"Well, what is it?"
"Just after we passed Grove Park, the fireman was on the front of the engine oiling, when he felt the locomotive increasing in speed till it became so appalling that he grew terrified and could not get back. He is a young fellow, and this is his trial trip. At length he managed to crawl back to the cab, where he found the driver lying, as he supposed, dead. This so increased his terror that he was only able to open the whistle and pull the cord communicating with the rear guard, and then fell in a swoon across the tender.
"The rear guard, a plucky young fellow of about six-and-twenty, twigging the situation, came, as we all know, along the footboard to the engine"—Margraf listened with all his remaining strength—"in order to stop the train before it ran into the Ramsgate express, but apparently was too late."
"But what was up with the driver, and where was the front guard in the meanwhile?"
"Well, it appears from what the front guard says—marvellous how he escaped with hardly a scratch—both these men had been drugged, and as they were both of them to have run the mail train to the Continent to-night, things look very fishy."
Margraf nearly fainted in his efforts to listen more intensely.
"They were changed on to this train at the last moment, and hence this accident. The rear guard, poor fellow, was shockingly mangled. Stone dead, of course; and leaves, I understand, a wife and child. There will no doubt be a collection made for him. He was a plucky fellow."