"Then, when you came West on your inspection trip, the trap was sprung. You were told that Ford had been doing a dishonorable thing, and you were urged to come over here and see for yourself. To make sure that there should be no slips, Penfield was sent with you, ostensibly as your acting secretary, but really as a spy--" "Oh, no; I can't think that of young Penfield," protested the president. "I say yes; and the proof is that Penfield has confessed. He was scared into it when I told him what had happened at Horse Creek and gave him his choice of telling me what he knew, or going to jail. Then I came on the scene at the inopportune moment, and after North had carefully issued instructions intended to delay me as much as possible, he sent Eckstein in post-haste by way of Jack's Canyon and the stage trail to get ahead of me. You see, he was afraid to trust matters to Penfield, who would most certainly have stopped short of the desperate measures Eckstein and the MacMorroghs finally took. It was decided at a council in which Penfield was present, that Ford's elimination must go through. If you didn't quarrel with him and drop him, he was to be murdered." Mr. Colbrith was silent for a long minute after Adair ceased speaking. Then he looked up to say: "What was Ford doing at Horse Creek that night? He had left me only a few hours before; and, as I have said, we had--we had some words." Adair smiled. "He was about to begin doing what he has been doing ever since: flogging the extension into shape night and day to get it ready to carry passengers and freight. He conceived it to be his duty--to you as well as to the other stock-holders. And he _has_ flogged it into shape. Look out of that window, Uncle Sidney!" A long passenger train, crowded to the platforms, and with the private car "01" in tow, was winding down the grade of the opposite hillside, and as they stepped to the windows the engineer woke the echoes with the engine whistle. "The first one of many, let us hope," said the young man, standing at his uncle's elbow. Then, with quite a different note in his voice: "It's Stuart's work, all of it. He has scarcely stopped to eat or sleep since that horrible night in the Pannikin valley. And that night, Uncle Sidney, I fought shoulder to shoulder with him--as a brother should; he is a man, and--there are not many more--like him." The president's thin lips were drawn into straight lines, and the thin goat's-beard stood out at the argumentative angle. Mr. Colbrith was chary of his emotions. "Will he sell us that stock in the Little Alicia, Charles Edward?" Adair smiled at the determined return to the practical. "No," he said; "I don't think he will--I shouldn't, if I were in his place. But he will do the next best thing: he will marry Alicia and so bring it into the family. And on the railroad conditions I have named, I am quite sure he will make you his voting proxy if you want to use it in forcing the combine."