As the engine drew near the scene of the wreck, a great crowd could be seen standing about the track. Before the train came to a stop. Robert Hardy leaped down from the cab and struggled forward, uttering cries of which he himself probably was not conscious. The accident had occurred upon a bridge which spanned a small river in the vicinity of Baldwin, near which town Mr. Hardy’s brother lived.

The engine, mail car, two day-coaches and two sleepers had crashed through, and falling a distance of fifty feet had partly broken through the ice of the frozen stream. To add to the horror of the disaster the two sleepers had caught fire, and there was absolutely no means to fight it. Mr. Hardy caught confused glimpses of men down on the ice throwing handfuls of snow upon blazing timbers in a frantic attempt to drive back or put out the flames. He fell, rather than scrambled, down the steep, slippery bank of the stream, and then the full horror of the situation began to dawn upon him.

The baggage-car and tender had fallen in such a way that the trucks rested upright on the ice, and the position of the timbers was relatively that of the train before it had left the track. One day-coach lay upon its side, but had broken completely in two as if some giant hand had pulled it apart, leaving the ragged ends of timbers projecting towards one another in such curious fashion that if the two ends of the car had been pushed towards the middle the splintered beams would have fitted into place almost as if made on a pattern. The other day-coach had fallen upon one end, and one-third of the entire coach was under water. The other end, resting partly against the broken car, stuck up in the air like some curious, fantastic pillar or leaning tower. Mr. Hardy was conscious of all this and more as he heard the groans of the injured, and the cries of those begging to be released from the timbers under which they had been caught. But his own children! Never had he so loved them as now. The crowd of people had increased to a mob. The confusion was that of terror. Mr. Hardy rushed about the wreck searching for his children, a great throbbing at his heart as he thought of their probable fate, when the sweetest of all sounds, Bessie’s dear voice, came to him , and the next minute he had caught up the child as she ran to him, and strained her to his breast as he held her in his arms as in the old days when he had carried her about the house and yard.

“Where are Will and Clara”

“O father! they’re here, and Will wasn’t hurt much more than I was. But Clara has fainted and she is lying down over here.”

Bess dragged her father out across the ice to the edge of the bank where a number of the victims had been laid on the cushions of the seats, some dead, some dying, and there lay Clara, very white and still, with Will bending over her, himself bleeding from several wounds about the head and hands, but still conscious and trying to restore his sister.

Mr. Hardy kneeled down in the snow by his son’s side, and Will, seeing him there, was not surprised, but he sobbed excitedly, “Oh, she is dead!”

“No,” replied his father, “she is not.”

Clara stirred, and her lips moved, but she did not open her eyes, and then her father noticed that a strange mark lay over her face. How Mr. Hardy succeeded in carrying the girl to the top of the bank, how he left her there in the care of brave-hearted women while he went down into that hell’s pit to rescue victims imprisoned and groaning for help, how Bess related the accident of the night and tried to explain how she was not hurt except a scratch or two, because she fell between two car-seat cushions that were jammed around her and protected her from injury, how the excitement grew as it was discovered that the dead and dying would number more that seventy-five instead of ten or twelve as Burns telephoned, how finally Robert Hardy and Will and Bess and Clara, with other victims, were taken back to Barton, where a great crowd of anxious, pale-faced people was surging through the station and over the track, how James Caxton was first to board the train down by the shops at the risk of his neck as in the rainy darkness he swung himself on the dead run up to the platform of the coach, how Mrs. Hardy met her children and husband, how there was sorrow in many a home in Barton that night and for many days to come, how Mr. Hardy finally, a little after midnight, entirely exhausted by the events of the day and night, fell asleep and dreamed the scene all over again-- all this and a great deal more might be of interest concerning one of the most remarkable railroad accidents that ever occurred in this country, but would be out of place in this narrative. For it is all true, exactly and literally, only the detailed horrors of it no pen can describe, no words can tell.

Mr. Hardy woke about eight o’clock, rested, but feeling very lame and sore from his exertions of the night. His first thought was of Clara. When he went to sleep the girl seemed to be resting without pain, only that strange mark across her face made them all anxious. It was not a bruise, but it lay like a brand across the eyes which had not opened since her father found her lying by the frozen steam. James had insisted on staying in the house to be of service, and Mrs. Hardy had felt grateful for his presence as she watched for returning consciousness from Clara, who still gave no more sign of animation although she breathed easily and seemed to be free from pain. Every doctor and surgeon in town had been summoned to the scene of the accident. But Mr. Hardy felt so anxious for Clara as he came in and looked at her, that he went downstairs and asked James if he wouldn’t run out and see if any of the doctors had returned.

“Yes, sir, I’ll go at once. How is she now, Mr. Hardy?” James looked him in the face with the look that love means when it is true and brave. “My boy,” replied Mr. Hardy laying his hand on James’s shoulder, “I don’t know. There is something strange about it. Get a doctor if you can. But I know there must be many other sad homes today in Barton. Oh, it was horrible!”

He sat down and covered his face while James with a brief “God help us, sir!” went out in search of a doctor.

Mr. Hardy went upstairs again, and with his wife kneeled down and offered a prayer of thanksgiving and of appeal. “O Lord,” said Robert, “grant that this dear one of ours may be restored to us again. Spare us this anguish, not in return for our goodness but out of Thy great compassion for our sins repented of!”

Will and Bess lay in the next room, and now that the reaction had set in they were sleeping, Will feverish and restless, Bess quite peaceful, as if nothing had happened out of the usual order of things.

“Where is George?” asked Mr. Hardy as he rose from his prayer.

“I don’t know, Robert. He started down to the train a little while after you did. Haven’t you seen him?”

“No, Mary. God grant he may not --” Mr. Hardy did not dare finish his thought aloud. His wife guessed his thought, and together the two sat hand in hand, drawn very near by their mutual trouble and by all the strange events of the strange week. And together they talked of the accident, and of Clara and James, and their oldest son; and then Mrs. Hardy said, as she tremblingly drew her husband’s face near to her:

“Robert, do you still have that impression concerning the time left you here to live? Do you still think this week is to be the end?”

Mrs. Hardy had a vague hope that the shock of the accident might have destroyed the impression of the dream, but her hope was disappointed.

“My dear wife,” replied Robert, “there is not the least doubt in my mind that my dream was a vision of what will happen. There is no question but that after Sunday I shall not be with you. This is Wednesday. How lightning-like the days have flown! How precious the moments are! How many of them I have wasted in foolish selfishness! Mary, I should go mad with the thought if I did not feel the necessity of making this week the best week of all my life. Only I do not know what is most important to do. If it had been seven months, or even seven weeks, I might have planned more wisely. Oh, it is cruelly brief, the time! But I must make the wisest possible use of it. This accident, so unexpected, has complicated the matter. I had not reckoned on it.”

How many of us do reckon on accidents! They always come into our lives with a shock. Yet is seems possible that a man who lives very close to God every day might be so ready for everything that not even the terrible catastrophe could make much difference to his plans for daily life, least of all deprive him of his reason as it has so often done. Robert Hardy was just beginning to realize dimly that life is not one thing, but many things, and that its importance is the importance which belongs to the character of God himself.

He began to talk calmly with his wife concerning what he would do that day, and was still talking about it when James came in with a doctor who at once went upstairs. He was just from the scene of the accident, and bore marks of a hard night’s work. His first glance at Clara was hard and professional. But as he looked he grew very grave, and an expression of serious surprise came over his weary face. He laid his hands on the girl’s eyes and examined them; raised her hand and dropped it upon the bed again. Then turning to the father and mother he said gently,

“You must prepare yourselves for a terrible fact resulting from the shock to your daughter. She has suffered a shock that will probably render her blind as long as she lives.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hardy listened, pale-faced and troubled. It was hard to think of the girl, so strong-willed, so passionate, and yet so capable of noble impulses and loving desires, as all her life shut up within the darkness thus. It was bitter to think of this for her. What would it be to her when she awoke to the whole consciousness of it? The doctor spoke again slowly:

“There is another thing you ought to be prepared for. In rare cases like this , it happens sometimes that a loss of hearing accompanies the loss of sight” Then after a pause, “And with the loss of sight and hearing it is possible the peculiar shock has deprived your daughter of the power of speech. I do not know yet whether this has happened, but I prepare you for the worst.”

“Blind, and deaf, and dumb!” murmured Mr. Hardy, while his wife sat down and buried her face in the bed clothes and sobbed. It seemed terrible to them. The doctor, after a little further examination, said nothing more could be done at present, gave directions for certain necessary treatment, and departed after giving a look at Will and Bess and prescribing for them. Mr. Hardy went downstairs and quietly told James all that the doctor had said. To a man living on the verge of eternity, as Mr. Hardy was, there was no time for evasions or the postponing of bad news, or the utterance of soft speeches. James took the news more calmly than Mr. Hardy thought he would. It was evident he did not realize all that was meant by it.

“Can you love Clara under these conditions?” asked Mr. Hardy, looking at James with a sympathy that the young man could not help feeling.

“Yes, sir, more than ever. Why, is she not more in need of it than ever?”

“True. But what can you do with a helpless creature like that?”

“God help us, sir! If she was my wife now and was dependent on me, don’t you think I could care for her tenderly better than anyone else in the world?”

Mr. Hardy shook his head. “This is a hard blow to me, James. I don’t know just what to say yet. But it is possible the poor girl may not have to suffer all that. Let us hope the doctor is not justified in his supposition. Indeed, he said he could not tell for certain that loss of hearing and speech would follow. If they do, I cannot see how Clara can retain her reason when she recovers from the shock. James, I believe you are a good fellow. I have not forgotten my own courtship. I will not stand in the way between you and your love for Clara in anything right and reasonable. I had hoped we might have a good talk together over the matter. This accident has made it impossible for a time, at least. But I confide in you as an honest, true man. We must wait for events to take shape. Meanwhile let us pray God to give us wisdom and lead us into the way we need to go.”

James Caxton listened to Mr. Hardy with a feeling of astonishment. This was not the Robert Hardy he had know all his life. This was a new man. For a moment his own hopes and fears were almost lost sight of in the thought of the great change in the elder man. In a tumult of feeling he went home, after begging Mrs. Hardy to send him word if Clara became worse of if there was any service he could render the family, and Robert went back upstairs where his wife sat by the side of the injured girl.

“Mary,” he said, “I must go down to the shop. You know I left word with Wellman to do what he could in the office until I could get down. But this accident has made it imperative that I be there myself. There are details the men cannot attend to. I cannot do any more here, and I must do what I can for the sufferers. God has been merciful to us, dear. Our dear ones are spared to us. Oh, when I heard Bessie’s voice in that hell’s pit it seemed to me God was taking pity on me for the burden I am carrying this week. And if she had been killed I do believe I should have gone mad. Pray for me, sweetheart!” And with a kiss and embrace Robert left the house, and even in the sorrow of all her trouble, Mrs. Hardy felt a great wave of joy flow through her at the thought of a love come back to her, and as she went to the window and watched the tall, strong figure swing down the street, she almost felt a girl again, and wondered if he would turn around and see her there and toss his hat to her as in the old days. Yes, just before he reached the corner when he had to turn he looked back up at the window, saw his wife standing there, and took off his hat with a smile, and she waved her hand at him and colored as when her Robert used to do the same thing when he was courting her! “Two fools!” somebody says. Yes, two children of God, who have seen His face and learned what all this life means.

He found much to do at the shops. The accident necessitated special work. It looked to him as if he must be down there all day. There was almost a panic in the planing-rooms. The air was heavy with the horror of the night before. Owing to the wreck, there was more need of work in the shops then ever. But along towards noon Burns came into the office pulling a long face, and asking Mr. Hardy to step across the yard and talk to the men who had threatened, Burns said, to do mischief if they were not given the afternoon to go down to the scene of the disaster. Mr. Hardy, with a sinking heart, rose and followed Burns into the planing-rooms. He told the foreman to get the men together in the center of the room. They stopped their machines and gathered in the largest open space between the planers, and Mr. Hardy addressed them.

“What do you want? Burns tells me there is dissatisfaction. Speak out so that we may know what the trouble is.”

There was an awkward pause. Then one man spoke up.

“We think the company ought to give us the day off.”

“What for?” asked Mr. Hardy mildly. Under any other circumstances he would have told the men they might leave for good if they did not like the pay and the company. He had done just that thing twice before. But things were different now. He looked at the men in a new light. He was a new man himself. Besides, it was imperative that the work in the shops go on. The company could ill afford to lose the work just at this particular time. All these considerations did not blind Robert to his obligations as an officer of the company. He was only anxious that no injustice should be done. So he said, “What for?” mildly and quietly, and waited for an answer.

The spokesman was not quite ready with an answer. The directness of the question, and the mildness of it also, surprised him. Another man spoke up.

“Our friends were in the accident. We want to go see them.”

“Very well. How many men had relatives or friends in the accident who are injured or killed? Let them step forward.”

There was a moment of inaction. Then three men stepped out. Mr. Hardy said, “You may go if you want to. Why didn’t you ask for leave off if you wanted it? What reason have you to suppose the company would refuse such a request? Now, what is the trouble with the rest? The company is not in a position to grant a holiday at this particular time, and you know it. Come! Be fair, men! I can’t shut down the shops all day to let you go and see a railroad wreck. Be reasonable! What do you want?”

“We want more pay and freedom from Sunday work,” said a big fellow, the Norwegian who ran the biggest planer in the shop. He had more than once proved troublesome to Burns, but he was a remarkably intelligent and skillful workman, and the foreman had endured much irritation on that account.

Mr. Hardy replied, still speaking pleasantly, “The matter of more pay is one we cannot well discuss here now, but I will say to you and all the rest that as far as it is in my power there shall be no more Sunday work demanded ---” “while I live” -- Mr. Hardy was on the point of saying, but he said instead “of the men in the shops.”

“Still, that is not the question,” replied the man in an insolent tone. Mr. Hardy looked at him more closely and saw that he had been drinking. Several of the workmen cried out,

“Shut up, Herman! Mr. Hardy be right; we be fools to make row now at this time.”

And a dozen men started for their machines to go to work again, while Burns went up and laid his hand on the Norwegian’s arm and said to him, roughly,

“Quit off now. You’ve been dipping that beard of yours into a whisky barrel. Better mind your pegs or you get your walking papers.”

“Mind your own, Burns,” replied the big man heavily. “You be somethings of a beard drinker yourself if you had the beard.”

Burns was so enraged at the drunken retort that he drew back as if to strike the man, when the Norwegian smote the foreman a blow that laid him sprawling in the iron dust. Instantly Mr. Hardy stepped up between the two men before Burns could rise. We have spoken of Robert’s intense horror of the coarse physical vices. It seemed totally wrong to him that a workman should degrade himself with drink. Besides, he could not tolerate such actions in the shops. He looked the drunken man in the face and said sternly:

“You are discharged! I cannot afford to employ drunken men in these shops. You may go this instant!”

The man leered at Mr. Hardy, raised his arm as if to strike, while the manager confronted him with a stern look, but before he could do any harm two or three of the men seized him and hustled him back to the other end of the shops, while Burns arose, vowing vengeance. The men went back to their machines, and Mr. Hardy, with an anxious feeling of heart, went back into the office, satisfied that there would be no trouble at the shops for the rest of the day at least. He felt sorry that he had been obliged to discharge Herman, but he felt that he had done the right thing. The company could not afford in any way to employ men who were drunkards, especially not just at this time, when it began to be more than plainly hinted that the result of the accident on the road was due to the partial intoxication of a track inspector. That accident was a complication in Robert Hardy’s Seven Days. It was demanding of him precious time that he longed to spend in his family.

At one time in the afternoon as he worked at the office, Mr. Hardy was tempted to resign his position and go home, come what might. But to his credit be it said, even in his most selfish moments formerly, he had been faithful to his duties at the office. At present no one could take his place at once. He felt that his duty to the company and to the public demanded his services at the time of a crisis in railroad matters. So he stayed and worked on, praying as he worked for his dear ones and hoping, as no bad news came from home, that Clara was better. He had been to the telephone several times and had two or three short talks with his wife, and now as it began to grow dark in the office, just as the lights were turned on the bell rang again, and Mrs. Hardy called him up to tell him that the minister, Mr. Jones, had called and wanted to see him about some of the families that were injured in the accident at the foundry-room.

“Tell Mr. Jones I will try to see him at the meeting to-night.” (In Barton the church meeting fell on Wednesday.) “And tell him I will have something to give him for what he wants. How is Clara now?”

“No change yet. Will is suffering some form nervousness. He says he had a horrible dream of the accident this afternoon. Bess is about the same Her escape was a miracle.”

“Has George come home yet?”

“No, I am getting anxious about him. I wish you would inquire about him at the Bramleys as you come up to supper.”

“I will. I must leave very soon. This has been a terrible day down here. God keeps us. Good bye.”

~ end of chapter 7 ~