'Well?'
How impatient he was!
'It was a very unnecessary death.'
'Yes? How?'
'They were playing on the railroad tracks—Felix and Phillip, and a school friend of Phillip's, placing pennies and bits of wire on the steel rail, it seems, for the train to run over and crush into queer shapes, and Felix, the boys report, had used his jackknife to twist a piece of wire, or cut it off, I don't know which, and evidently laid the knife down on the steel rail and forgot it, till it was too late.'
'You mean he tried to get it when it was too late?'
'Exactly. It was an old jackknife he had carried for years, and he was very fond of it, Sheilah says.'
'I understand. He was a queer chap. Always fond of all his tools.'
'He didn't notice the knife on the rails till the train was approaching. He pointed it out to the two boys, and called back to them as he ran that he was going to get it. And he almost did get it. They found the knife in his hand afterward. But he tripped and fell. The headlights on the approaching engine must have dazed him, Sheilah thinks. It was dark, late afternoon, mercifully so dark, the little boys saw none of the details. He was killed instantly, they say.' Cicely paused and leaning took a cigarette from the low table near by.
