“Didn’t I? But Connolly is simply an abysmal brute; a man-driver without any of the little gifts of perspicacity. He took me under his wing like a stepfather-in-law; advised me bluntly to put my money into Consolidated Coal at one-forty rather than to go gunning on my own hook, or yours, or anybody’s, in Consolidated Coal’s intimate back yard. Pressed a little harder, he hinted that you wouldn’t be allowed to dig any real coal out of the Ocoee, providing there were any worth digging--which there wasn’t.” “‘Wouldn’t be allowed, Mr. Connolly?’ said I, as lamb-like as possible. ‘How could Tregarvon be prevented?’” “‘There’s manny a way, Misther Carfax,’ he scowled up at me; and then he let the cat out of the pillow-case: ‘These young min widout practical experience--’tis manny a blunder they’ll be making, and they’re soon discouraged entirely. I’m hearing that this same Misther Tregarvin is having throuble to beat the band, and him not fair at the beginning of it yet.’” Tregarvon was absently spilling a spoonful of sugar into his after-dinner coffee--a sufficient measure of his interest in Carfax’s story. “From all of which you have argued that there is a C. C. & I. spy in our camp, haven’t you, Poictiers?” he said. “Yes.” “And the remedy?” “Is to find and fire him.” “The firing part of it will be easy; but the finding is a horse of another color. All of my squad save one or two, I believe, have worked at odd times for the C. C. & I. Every able-bodied man in this region digs coal a little now and then; ‘huckleberry miners,’ the regulars call them.” “We’ll simply have to watch and sift; that’s all,” said Carfax. “Well, you’ve done a good day’s work, anyway,” was Tregarvon’s summing-up of the amateur detective’s report. “Candidly, I didn’t think you had it in you, Poictiers. You don’t look it, you know--to the naked eye.” The angelic smile came and sat upon the clean-shaven, womanish face of the golden youth. “Don’t you know, Vance,” he drawled lispingly, “I believe that is my strong point: not looking the ready-made, hand-me-down villain. It is foolishly easy to make people take me for a harmless, good-natured scrap-bag into which they can tuck any old thing they don’t happen to be needing at the moment. Why, even old Daddy Layne confided in me. Coming home, he told me all about the feud of the family of one of his sons-in-law with the McNabbs. By the way, that reminds me: did you know that you have two of the McNabb cousins in your working gang?--the fellows who call themselves Morgan and Sill?” Tregarvon had not known it; and a new field of conjecture as to the disasters was promptly opened. Why charge the coal trust with the campaign of obstruction when two of the avowed enemies of Ocoee progress were right on the ground day by day?