I read a story once where the dispatcher sent out a lap order on two trains and his mistake was staring at him all the time from his order book. I guess that was a slip of the pen, and he never noticed it. That was queer enough, but what Breen did was queerer still. His order book showed straight as a string. The freight was to hold at Muddy Lake, ten miles west of Elktail, for Number One. Number One, of course, as I told you, running free. Somehow, I don’t know how, it’s one of those things you can’t explain, a subconscious break between the mind and the mechanical, physical action, you’ve noticed it in little things you’ve done yourself, Breen wired the word “Elktail” instead of “Muddy Lake”--and never knew it--never had a hint that anything was wrong--never caught it on the repeat, and gave back his O. K. The order, the written order in the book, was exactly as it should be. It read Muddy Lake--that was right, Muddy Lake. You see what happened? There wasn’t time for the freight to make Elktail, but she got within three miles of it--and that’s as far as she ever got! In a nasty piece of track, full of trestles and gorges, where the right of way bends worse than the letter S, they met, the two of them, head on--Number One and Number Eighty-Two! And Breen didn’t know what he had done even after the details began to pour in. How could he know? What was Eighty-Two doing east of Muddy Lake? She should have been waiting there for Number One to pass her. The order book showed that plain enough. And all through the rest of that night, while he worked like a madman clearing the line, getting up hospital relief, and wrecking trains--with Carle-ton, he was super then, gray-faced and haggard, like the master of a storm-tossed liner on his bridge giving orders, pacing the room, cursing at times at his own impotency--Breen didn’t know, neither of them knew, where the blame lay. But the horror of the thing had Breen in its grip even then. I was there that night, and I can see him now bent over under the green-shaded lamp--I can see Carleton’s face, and it wasn’t a pleasant face to see. One thing I remember Breen said. Once, as the sounder pitilessly clicked a message more ghastly than any that had gone before, adding to the number of those whose lives had gone out forever, adding to the tale of the wounded, to the wild, mad story of chaos and ruin, Breen lifted his head from the key for a moment, pushed his hair out of his eyes with a nervous, shaky sweep of his hand, and looked at Carleton. “It’s horrible, horrible,” he whispered; “_but think of the man who did it_. Death would be easy compared to what he must feel. It makes me as weak as a kitten to think of it, Carleton. My God, man, don’t you see! I, or any other dispatcher, might do this same thing to-morrow, the next day, or the day after. Tell me again, Carleton, tell me again, that order’s straight.” “Don’t lose your nerve,” Carleton answered sharply. “Whoever has blundered, it’s not you.”