The boy gaped, picked it up, grinned and scampered off. Eaton spread the news-sheet before him and swiftly scanned the lines for information as to the fate of the man who, for four days, had been lying only forty feet away from him at the other end of a Pullman car. The paper--a Minneapolis one--blared at him that Santoine's condition was very low and becoming rapidly worse. But below, under a Montana date-line, Eaton saw it proclaimed that the blind millionaire was merely sick; there was no suggestion anywhere of an attack. The paper stated only that Basil Santoine, returning from Seattle with his daughter and his secretary, Donald Avery, had been taken seriously ill upon a train which had been stalled for two days in the snow in Montana. The passenger from whom the information had been gained had heard that the malady was appendicitis, but he believed that was merely given out to cover some complication which had required surgical treatment on the train. He was definite as regarded the seriousness of Mr. Santoine's illness and described the measures taken to insure his quiet. The railroad officials refused, significantly, to make a statement regarding Mr. Santoine's present condition. There was complete absence of any suggestion of violence having been done; and also, Eaton found, there was no word given out that he himself had been found on the train. The column ended with the statement that Mr. Santoine had passed through Minneapolis and gone on to Chicago under care of Dr. Douglas Sinclair. Eaton stared at the newspaper without reading, after he saw that. He thought first--or rather, he felt first--for himself. He had not realized, until now that he was told that Harriet Santoine had gone,--for if her father had gone on, of course she was with him,--the extent to which he had felt her fairness, almost her friendship to him. At least, he knew now that, since she had spoken to him after he was first accused of the attack on her father, he had not felt entirely deserted or friendless till now. And with this start of dread for himself, came also feeling for her. Even if they had taken her father from the other end of this car early in the night to remove him to another special car for Chicago, she would be still watching beside him on the train. Or was her watch beside the dying man over now? And now, if her father were dead, how could Harriet Santoine feel toward the one whom all others--if not she herself--accused of the murder of her father? For evidently it was murder now, not just "an attack." But why, if Santoine had been taken away, or was dead or dying, had they left Eaton all night in the car in the yards? Since Santoine was dying, would there be any longer an object in concealing the fact that he had been murdered?