"Come here, you!" he bellowed. "Can't you see that I want you?" With new accession of fury at being thus baited, the young man started up, resolved to take his employer aside and free his mind on that matter of news-mongering. But the bluff and busy tyrant was first, as he always was in his dealings with men. "Here, Wade," he shouted, "you shake hands with the prettiest girl in the north country! This is Miss Nina Ide, and this is my new time-keeper, Dwight Wade. He's going to find that there's more in lumbering than there is in being a college dude or teaching a school. Sit down, Wade." He pulled the young man into the seat. "Entertain this young lady," he commanded. "She don't want to talk with old chaps like me. Her father--well, I reckon you know her father! Oh, you don't? Well, he's first assessor of Castonia settlement, runs the roads, the schools, and the town, has the general store and post-office, and this pretty daughter that all the boys are in love with." And at the end of this delicate introduction he pushed brusquely between them, and went back to talk with his elderly admirer in the rear of the car. Wade looked into the gray eyes of the girl sullenly. There was an angry sparkle in her gaze. "Well, Mr. Wade, you may think from what that old fool said that I'm suffering to be entertained. If you think any such thing you can change your mind and go back." She had not a city-bred woman's self-poise, he thought. Her manner was that of the country belle, spoiled the least bit by flattery and attention. And yet, as he looked at her, he thought that he had never seen fairer skin to set off the flush of angry beauty. For others there was something alluring in the absolute whiteness of her teeth, peeping under the curve of her lip, in the nose (the least bit _retroussé_), in the looped locks of brown hair crossing her temples. Yet there was no admiration in his eyes. "I hope you won't hold me guilty of being the intruder," he said, coldly. "Not if you move your brogans over to some seat where there is more room for them," she returned, with a click of her white teeth that showed mild savagery. This young man who was in love with some one else, and who had scowled at her, was decidedly not to her liking, she thought, in spite of his regular features, his firm chin, his clean-cut mouth unhidden by beard, and his brown eyes. Wade flushed, rose, bowed with hat lifted to a rather ironical height, and took his seat alone, well to the front of the car. He saw MacLeod's baleful face framed in the little window of the smoking-car's door. For mile after mile, as the train jangled on, it remained there.