Carfax rather sheepishly confessed that his brain had not been capacious enough to entertain two ideas at once. Having fixed upon the coal trust as the trouble source to be investigated, he had completely overlooked the McNabb alternative. “I’ll do time for it, though,” he promised. “To-morrow will be Saturday; and if you’ll lend me the car again, I’ll find out something more about those moonshiners in the Pocket.” “Not alone, you won’t,” Tregarvon objected joyously. “It is going to be my Saturday off, too--and a holiday at Highmount. I’ll go with you, as far as the college, anyway.” VII Company Come On the day following Carfax’s journey of investigation to Whitlow, Tregarvon did not keep his promise to accompany the amateur Vidocq. There were still some repairs to be made on the tramway, and since a working squad of the laborers turned up to round out the week, Tregarvon stayed with his men and became a track foreman again. Carfax, too, had apparently changed his mind overnight. Instead of driving off up the mountain after breakfast, he headed the yellow car down the valley road and was gone all day. When he returned, late in the afternoon, it was evident that he had discovered some other way of ascending Pisgah. The committee of leisure, sitting, as usual, on Tait’s porch, and amusing itself, also as usual, at the expense of an expatriated London serving-man, marked the yellow car returning by way of the mountain pike; observed, further, that Carfax was accompanied by two men, one of whom sprang from the car at the turn in the road nearest to the railway and ran to catch a northbound train of coal-empties, so escaping unidentified by the idlers. Carfax’s other passenger, well-known to Coalville as “The Bug Professor” at Highmount, descended from the auto more deliberately and went across to the coke-ovens to shake hands with Tregarvon. “Comp’ny come, over yander,” Daddy Layne remarked to Merkley. “Better hump yo’self acrost the track an’ git ready to curl yo’ boss’s ha’r, hadn’t ye, English?” Merkley adjourned himself accordingly, reaching the office-building in time to be sent to show Hartridge the way to the bath-room on the second floor. Carfax made no explanation to Tregarvon about the guest-bringing other than to say that he had captured the professor on the mountain, and had brought him down to take pot-luck of Uncle William’s preparing. “We can eat him all right,” said the young mine owner hospitably; “but if we have to sleep him as well----” “We shan’t,” Carfax asserted. “I have promised to drive him back to Highmount in the car after dinner.” “Oh, that’s better. Who was the other fellow?--the one who jumped out and sprinted for the up freight?” “Wait,” said Carfax mysteriously; “wait and you’ll find out.” And Tregarvon, having no alternative, had to wait.