At the opposite side of the station was the mail-stage, a dusty, rusty conveyance with a lurching canopy of cracked leather above its four seats, and four doleful horses waiting the snap of the driver's whip. Without a word to Britt, Wade led the way to the coach, and set the suit-case between the seats. He limped as he walked, and his teeth were set in pain. He gave his hand to the girl, and she silently accepted the assistance and took her place in the coach. Then he turned to meet the fiery gaze of the Honorable Pulaski, who had followed close on their heels, choking with expletives. "I reckon I see through this now," he growled. "Tryin' to cut out the cleanest feller in the Umcolcus with your dude airs! But Rod Ide's girl ain't to be fooled by city notions. She knows a man when she sees him." He chucked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of MacLeod, busy with the laggard men. "Go aboard, and let this be an end of your meddling, young man." "You just speak for yourself and attend to your business, Mr. Britt!" cried the girl, with a spirit that cowed even the tyrant's bluster. "'Rod Ide's girl,' as you call her, can choose all her own affairs, and you needn't scowl at me, for I'm not on your pay-roll and I'm not afraid of you!" She turned to Wade with real gentleness in her tones. "I'm afraid he hurt you. It's a rough country up here. If you hadn't been trying to help me it wouldn't have happened. He had no right to--" She checked herself suddenly, and her cheeks flamed. "That wasn't a fair twit about my sticking my nose into your affairs, Miss Nina," protested Britt, and turning from her he visited his rage vicariously on his time-keeper, taking him by the arm and starting to drag him. "I told you to get aboard!" he rasped. "And when my men that I hire don't do as I tell 'em to do, I kick 'em aboard--and a time-keeper is no better than a swamper with me when he leaves this railroad. You want to understand those things and save lots of trouble." "You take your hand off my arm, Mr. Britt," said the young man. He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his voice that impressed the Honorable Pulaski, who knew men. "Now," resumed Wade, "for reasons of my own and that I don't propose to explain, I am going to ride to Castonia settlement on this mail-stage." "It's safe to go on the wagon," persisted Britt, more mildly. "I tell you, if you mind your own business, I won't let him lick you." With face gray and rigid at an insult that the old man couldn't understand, Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, turned his back, and climbed aboard the coach. The girl moved along to the farther end, and gropingly and blindly, without thought as to where he was sitting, he took the place beside her. He remembered that as they drove away Britt shook that hairy fist at him, and that some rude roisterer on the wagons lilted some doggerel about "the chaney man." And through a sort of red mist he saw the face of Colin MacLeod.