“Tell me something first: is your railroad obliged to run straight along in the middle of this nice little ridge you've been making for it?” “Why--no; temporarily, it can run anywhere. But the problem is to get the track laid beyond this crossing before your uncle gets back with a trainload of armed guards.” “Any kind of track would do, wouldn't it?--just to secure the crossing?” “Certainly; anything that would hold the weight of the octopod. We shall have to rebuild most of the line, anyway, as soon as the frost comes out of the ground in the spring.” The brown eyes became far-seeing. “I was thinking,” she said musingly. “There is no time to make another nice little ridge. But you have piles and piles of logs over there,”--she meant the cross-ties,--“couldn't you build a sort of cobhouse ridge with those between your track and Uncle's, and cross behind the car? Don't laugh, please.” But Winton was far enough from laughing at her. Why so simple an expedient had not suggested itself instantly he did not stop to inquire. It was enough that the Heaven-born idea had been given. “Down out of that, Morty!” he cried. “It's one chance in a thousand. Pass the word to the men; I'll be with you in a second.” And when Adams was rousing the track force with the bawling shout of “_Ev-erybody_!” Winton looked up into the brown eyes. “My debt to you was already very great: I owe you more now,” he said. But she gave him his quittance in a whiplike retort. “And you will stand here talking about it when every moment is precious? Go!” she commanded; and he went. So now we are to conceive the maddest activity leaping into being in full view of the watchers at the windows of the private car. Winton's chilled and sodden army, welcoming any battle-cry of action, flew to the work with a will. In a twinkling the corded piles of cross-ties had melted to reappear in cobhouse balks bridging an angle from the Utah embankment to that of the spur track in the rear of the blockading Rosemary. In briefest time the hammermen were spiking the rails on the rough-and-ready trestle, and the Italians were bringing up the crossing-frogs. But the Rajah, astute colonel of industry, had not left himself defenseless. On the contrary, he had provided for this precise contingency by leaving McGrath's fireman in mechanical command on the Rosemary. If Winton should attempt to build around the private car, the fireman was to wait till the critical moment: then he was to lessen the pressure on the automatic air-brakes and let the car drop back down the grade just far enough to block the new crossing. So it came about that this mechanical lieutenant waited, laughing in his sleeve, until he saw the Italians coming with the crossing-frogs. Then, judging the time to be fully ripe, he ducked under the Rosemary to “bleed” the air-brake.