"Mr. Parsons," said Mr. Blaisdell, "we will have to ask you to excuse Mr. Houston, as we have a little business with him, and if you will step over there in the office and sit down, we will have completed our business in half or three-quarters of an hour; by that time the team will be here, in readiness to take us to the train." After a few moments of desultory conversation about the work which Houston knew to be only preliminary, during which Mr. Rivers moved about in a nervous, restless manner, Mr. Blaisdell said: "Mr. Houston, we hear some rather strange reports concerning your conduct lately; your actions have certainly been highly censurable, and the least that can be said is that you have exceeded your authority here in a very marked degree." "In what respect have I exceeded my authority?" demanded Houston, folding his arms, with an expression on his face that made the general manager regret that he had begun the encounter; but it was too late to retreat, besides, Rivers was watching him! "In your manner of discharging the duties assigned to you; you have taken advantage of your position in the most reprehensible and unworthy way, and have overstepped the bounds when you had no right whatever to do so." "I shall have to ask you to be a little more explicit, Mr. Blaisdell," Houston replied. "Why don't you come to the point, Blaisdell?" said Rivers impatiently. "What's the use of beating about the bush? The long and the short of it is just this," he added, turning to Houston, "you have been taking upon yourself what did not concern you, prying around, late at night, in mines with which you had nothing whatever to do, in company with miners who had no more business there than you had." "To what mine do you refer?" asked Houston, with exasperating persistency. "I mean the Lucky Chance, and you know it," retorted Rivers angrily. "Mr. Rivers," said Houston, in a tone that Blaisdell had heard on a former occasion, and with a steel-like glitter in his eyes that was anything but attractive to either of the gentlemen present; "Mr. Blaisdell knows, if you do not, that since my first coming here, whatever kind of work has been assigned to me, I have thoroughly familiarized myself with it. When I was given charge of these mines I had reason to suppose that each and every mine owned by the company was included under my supervision, and if there were any which the officers of the company, for reasons of their own, wished excluded from such supervision, it was their business so to inform me. I have not been so informed. Mr. Blaisdell himself took me into that mine, and nothing was said to lead me to suppose that that mine was any exception to those placed in my charge, and your informant, if he chose so to do, could tell you that I have inspected in like manner each and every mine under my supervision, taking with me one or both of the same men, when the mine happened to be one with which I was not familiar."