The baggage car had been demolished and the
smoker had turned over and gone down an embankment. There
were ten men killed... my head swam. Was that the train the
Professor had taken? Let me see. He left Woodbridge on a
local train at three. He had said the day before that the
express left Port Vigor at five.... If he had changed to the
express.....
In a kind of fascinated horror my eye caught the list of the
dead. I ran down the names. Thank God, no, Mifflin was not
among them. Then I saw the last entry:
UNIDENTIFIED MAN, MIDDLE-AGED.
What if that should be the Professor?
And I suddenly felt dizzy, and for the first time in my life
I fainted.
Thank goodness, no one else was in the room. The drummers had
gone outside again, and no one heard me flop off the chair.
I came to in a moment, my heart whirling like a spinning top.
At first I did not realize what was wrong. Then my eye fell
on the newspaper again. Feverishly I re-read the account, and
the names of the injured, too, which I had missed before.
Nowhere was there a name I knew. But the tragic words
"unidentified man" danced before my eyes. Oh! if it
were the Professor....
In a wave the truth burst upon me.
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