Her smile was an invitation. Halloway did not accept it at once, but, plainly eager to be off, stuck to the magnate for a long ten minutes. Then, “Hang duty!” he said, and with a word of caution to his accomplice, he disappeared after her behind the rocks. His long shadow had scarcely trailed out of view before old Gray and a flask of old Scotch were laying siege to Corduroy. The task of sapping his loyalty was no easy one. It took thirty minutes of argument—of threats, cajolery, promises, interspersed with frequent internal applications of the contents of the flask—to win him over. There were times when I despaired of hooking our shy fish, and even after he had swallowed the bait he fought against being landed. Every moment I expected to see Halloway’s impudent curly head rising over the brow of the hill. I was as nervous as a youngster awaiting a caning, but they don’t make them more cool and game than old Gray was. Our joint pocket books happened to carry five hundred twenty-five dollars, and it took all we had except some silver change to buy a release. But in the end I had the satisfaction of seeing the rotund millionaire and Corduroy legging it down the hill toward Manitou. I am not going to pretend that I have often spent as bad a quarter of an hour as the one which followed, during which I saw their figures lessen in the distance. It was not until they had reached the red thread of the valley road that I breathed freely. I was ready now for the villain to reenter, and, as if pat to his cue, the alluring vagabond I had cast for the part sauntered into view. He was very much engrossed with his companion, and—I noticed it with a pang of envy—she with him. Both of them seemed always to radiate health and vitality, but my jaundiced eyes found about them now a scarce decently subdued sparkle of exhilaration. They were in a world primeval and everybody else forgotten. There have been times when I have trod air and breathed champagne myself, but that did not make me any less sulky now. I resented to the bottom of my soul their Eden from which I was excluded. [Illustration: “In a world primeval.”] They were almost on me before they wakened to things mundane. “Hello, Damron!” Halloway looked over the plateau and brought his eyes back to me. “Where’s Mr. Gray?” Katherine started and looked guilty. I verily believe that till this moment the minx had forgotten she was in a conspiracy to worst him. I pointed to the disappearing specks. “On his way to a telegraph office. He is going to have the Consolidated election postponed till to-morrow,” I said with malicious triumph. “What did you do with John?” “Bought him. You should have stayed here. If you want a thing well done, you know!” “Oh! You seem to have been quite active.” He looked long at the figures through a pair of field glasses. “Why didn’t you go along?” he asked presently. “I thought I would stay and break the news of our little surprise to you,” I said tartly.