Now David had his own good reasons for not having taken Eben Grillage’s quick-witted daughter into the big bore where Regnier was driving his hard-rock crews. Day by day the dangerous ‘fault’ was scattering its warnings in chips and spallings of fresh rock thrown down from the disintegrating roof--evidences which Regnier was careful to remove before they should attract the attention of the railroad inspectors. “A tunnel in process of construction isn’t a good place in which to entertain inquisitive little girls,” David evaded. “And this particular tunnel is wet and mucky.” “That isn’t the reason why you haven’t taken me there,” she asserted calmly. “How do you know it isn’t?” “Because I was in the tunnel this afternoon. You had been making so many foolish excuses that my curiosity was aroused. I took advantage of your absence at the other end of things and made Mr. Plegg take me. He didn’t want to; he was just as gruff and impossible as he dared to be to the big boss’s daughter. But I made him do it.” It is easily conceivable that David felt cold chills racing up and down his spine at the bare thought of what might have happened during this unauthorized visit--this, be it remarked, though he fancied he had settled it definitely with himself that nothing was going to happen. “That was altogether wrong!” he said, in his best workmanlike manner. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t break discipline that way?” “Poof!” she retorted. “That is what Cumberleigh would call ‘putting on side’. It’s a pity if I have to ask permission when I wish to go somewhere--and of you!” He shook his head in despair. “You are not a bit less wilful than you used to be in the old Middleboro days. But, really, Vinnie, you mustn’t go into the tunnel again. It’s--it’s no place for visitors, or at least for women visitors.” “You have a reason for saying that, and it isn’t any of those you’ve been giving me,” she flashed back. “Do you think so?” He had not yet reached the point at which he could lie to her deliberately. “I know it. You haven’t any scruples about letting me get mucky and grimy on any other part of the work; you have rather enjoyed telling me that my face needed washing.” “Never, unless it did,” he laughed, hoping to find some way of diverting the talk from the unwelcome tunnel channel. But Miss Virginia, with an end in view, was not of those who may be easily turned aside. “Then there was Mr. Silas Plegg,” she went on. “I have had a good many escorts, first and last--and some of them unwilling, no doubt--but Mr. Plegg capped the climax. He was as nervous as a cat after we got inside, and if I didn’t know him so well, I should say he acted as if he were afraid of something.” “He was,” Plegg’s chief confirmed grimly. “I have given positive orders that no one, other than those connected with the working shifts, be admitted to the tunnel headings. Plegg knew he would be in for a bawling-out when I should find out what he’d done.”