Over Uncle William’s chicken gumbo the talk ran easily upon the business affair. Tregarvon had driven a rather good bargain on the new engine, and was inclined to expatiate upon it. In reality, however, he was trying to postpone the moment when Carfax should begin to talk of the more intimate things. That moment came with the pipe-filling before the cheerful wood-fire, after Uncle William had cleared the table and disappeared. “After you left, Saturday, I took Hartridge’s hint and went into the explosion details a little deeper,” said Carfax. “Rucker stayed with me and lent me his mechanical wit.” “What is the verdict?” “It is the Scotch verdict: ‘Not proven,’” was the thoughtful rejoinder. “Knowing, as we do, that at least one attempt was made to dynamite the boiler, I may have been oversuspicious. In such circumstances the judicial frame of mind is hard to attain. Rucker swears he left the furnace-door open when we stopped at noon. When we found the front sheet of the boiler three or four hundred yards away in the woods, the door was shut and latched.” “That proves nothing,” Tregarvon said. “No; anything might happen to a door, or to anything else, in a hurry trip of that kind. On the other hand, it would have been a very easy matter for some one to have sneaked up on the farther side of the engine while we were eating. And Rucker insists that only the closed door could have accounted for the sudden rise in pressure which caused the explosion.” “We’ll never know,” was Tregarvon’s comment. “But why Hartridge should shield our obstacle-thrower at one time, and try to set us on to him at another, is beyond me.” Carfax smiled soberly. “Mr. William W. Hartridge appears to be a unique. I had the pleasure of meeting him again, socially, no longer ago than yesterday.” “You spent the Sunday at Highmount?” “No; I did better than that. Wilmerding was down from Whitlow, and I found that he knows Judge Birrell familiarly and well. I took my courage in my hand, borrowed your beast of a car, and Wilmerding and I drove to Westwood House in the rain.” “So you have met Richardia’s father?” “I have; and a finer old citizen doesn’t exist. That suspicion of yours that he may be inspiring the fight on us is all bosh. He isn’t at all the kind of man to knife an enemy in the dark. He is a poem on the Old South, Vance; a whole heart-breaking epic. His manners would put a Chesterfield to shame; and you can see at once where Richardia gets her keen little mind. The judge was disposed to place me in the Parker class at first--quite naturally; I could see that plainly enough--that, and his prejudice against all things Northern. But I was there as the friend of his friend Wilmerding, and that settled it. A Bedouin chief couldn’t have been more hospitable.” “You told him you were going to marry Richardia?”