“I shall come again, in daytime,” he said. “You are living on the Murtrie claim?” “You must not!” she forbade quickly. “’Twould be--it might be as much as your life’s worth! Nor must you stay here talking to me. Go now, or the Plegg man will be asking questions that you can’t answer!” And with that she slipped aside and lost herself in the throng on the dancing-floor. David Vallory was gravely silent on the remainder of the round of investigation; and Plegg, knowing that something sobering had happened at Dargin’s dance-hall, respected his chief’s mood. But on the way back to the construction camp the silence was broken by David himself. “You saw the woman I was talking to in that place across from the Murtrie ore yard?” “Yes, I saw her.” “Do you know who she is?” Plegg nodded. “She is the one I was talking about.” “I know it. And the hound who brought her here? I believe you didn’t mention his name.” “It was Hudson--no, that isn’t quite it--Judson; Thomas Judson.” To the astonishment of the reticent, self-contained first assistant, David Vallory lifted his clenched hands to the stars and swore savagely. But as Plegg had respected his chief’s former silence, so now he respected the wrathful outburst. Farther along, when they were crossing the tracks in the material yard, David offered niggard explanation. “I knew the woman, back home, Plegg; I grew up with her. If ever a man needed killing, Tom Judson is that man.” “They were not married?” said Plegg. “I have no reason to believe that they were. But that doesn’t excuse Judson.” “Of course not; it makes it worse--if he was the original sinner.” “He was,” said David; “but he was not the only one.” And with that he shut his mouth like a trap and did not open it again until they reached the steps of their bunk car. Then he said shortly: “I am going up to Brady’s Cut. You needn’t leave the lamp burning for me when you turn in; I don’t know when I’ll get back.” In naming the place to which he was going, David gave the first assistant only the outward husk of the kernel of truth. As he tramped his stumbling course over the unevenly spaced cross-ties of the construction track in the general direction of Brady’s, he was thinking little enough of the work at the cutting or of anything connected with the affairs of the Grillage Engineering Company. Taking their revenge for a long period of banishment into a limbo of things conveniently pushed aside, the thoughts that had once harassed him into something like a congestive chill of moral remorse assailed him afresh.