Brant read the colonel’s scrawl, and what was left of his endurance took flight in an explosion of bad language. A minute later he burst into Antrim’s office. “Where is Mr. Craig?” he demanded. “He has gone to Ogden,” said Antrim, wondering what had happened to disturb the serenity of the self-contained draughtsman. “The devil he has! When will he be back?” “I don’t know--the last of the week, maybe.” “Damn!” Antrim laughed. “What ails you this morning? You look as if you’d had a bad night. Come inside and sit down--if you’re not too busy.” Brant let himself in at the wicket in the counter-railing and drew up a chair. “I am not busy enough--that is one of the miseries. And I want you to help me out, Harry. You have full swing here when the old man is away, haven’t you?” “Why--yes, after a fashion. What has broke loose?” Brant looked askance at the stenographer, and the chief clerk rightly interpreted the glance. “O John,” he said, “I wish you would take these letters down and put them on No. 3. Hand them to the baggageman yourself, and then you’ll be sure they have gone.” And when the door closed behind the young man he turned back to Brant. “Was that what you wanted?” “Yes, but I don’t know as it was necessary. There is nothing particularly private about what I want to say. You see, it is this way: Colonel Bowran is out on the Extension, and Grotter is with him. I am alone here in the office, and I’ve got to leave town suddenly. What I want you to do is to put somebody in there to keep house till the colonel returns.” The chief clerk smiled. “It must be something pretty serious to rattle you that way,” was his comment. “You are a good enough railroad man to know that my department has nothing to do with yours, except to ask questions of it. And that reminds me: here is a letter from the general manager asking if we have a late map of the Denver yards. The president is coming west in a day or two, and there is a plan on foot for extensions, I believe.” “Well?” said Brant. “It isn’t well--it’s ill. We haven’t any such map, and I don’t see but what you will have to stay and make one.” Now, to a man in Brant’s peculiar frame of mind employment was only one degree less welcome than immediate release. Wherefore he caught at the suggestion so readily that Antrim was puzzled. “I thought you had to go away, whether or no,” he said curiously. “Oh, I suppose I can put it off if I have to,” Brant rejoined, trying to hedge. “Which is another way of telling me to mind my own business,” retorted Antrim good-naturedly. “That’s all right; only, if you have struck a bone, you can comfort yourself with the idea that you have plenty of good company. No one of us has a monopoly of all the trouble in the world.” “No, I suppose not.” Brant said so much, and then got far enough away from his own trouble to notice that the chief clerk was looking haggard and seedy.