C. and E. Special 202, Rosebud. Special 202, Eng. 636, will run to Salt Rocks regardless of No. One. SALT ROCKS! I glared at the words and the letters of the words. I re-read the first order and read again the second. O'Fallon's for Number One. That was right. O'Fallon's it should be for the Special 202, of course, to meet her. But it wasn't: it was the first station east of O'Fallon's he had ordered the Special to run to. It was a lap order. My scalp began to creep. A lap order for the Irving Special and the Number One passenger, and it doomed them to meet head on somewhere between O'Fallon's and the Salt Rocks, in the Peace River cañon. My mouth went sticking dry. The sleet outside had deepened into a hail that beat the west glass sharper and the window shook again in the wind. I asked myself, afraid to look around, what Blackburn could be doing in Callahan's room. The horror of the wreck impending through his mistake began to grow on me; I know what I suffered; I ask myself now what he suffered, inside, alone, in the dark. Oh, you who lie down upon the rail at night to sleep, in a despatcher's hand, think you, ever, in your darkened berths of the cruel responsibility on the man who in the watches of the night holds you in his keeping? Others may blunder; others may forget; others may fall and stand again: not the despatcher; a single mistake damns him. When he falls he falls forever. Young as I was, I realized that night the meaning of the career to which my little ambition urged me. The soldier, the officer, the general, the statesman, the president, may make mistakes, do make mistakes, that cost a life or cost ten thousand lives. They redeem them and live honored. It is the obscure despatcher under the lamp who for a single lapse pays the penalty of eternal disgrace. I felt something of it even then, and from my boy's heart, in the face of the error, in the face of the slaughter, I pitied Blackburn. Callahan's room door opened again and Blackburn came out of the dark. I had left the table and was standing in front of the stove. He looked at me almost eagerly; the expression of his face had completely changed. I never in my life saw such a change in so few minutes on any man's face, and, like all the rest, it alarmed me. It was not for me to speak if I had been able, and he did not. He walked straight over to the table, closed the order book, plugged Callahan's house wire again, and began calling him. The assistant superintendent answered, and Blackburn sent him just these words: "You need not come down." I heard Callahan reply with a question: "What is the matter?" Blackburn stood calmly over the key, but he made no answer. Instead, he repeated only the words, "You need not come down."