Lansdale went silent what time it took to splice out the past with the present. After which he said: "I understand now why Miss Elliott condemns him, but not quite clearly why you defend him. As I remember it, the man who got possession of the Midas posed as a highwayman of the sort that the law can't punish. What has he to say for himself?" Bartrow shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him since one day last fall; the day of the locomotive chase." "Did you know then that he was going to steal his partner's mine?" "No. I thought then that he was going to do the other thing. And I'll not believe yet that he hasn't done the other thing. It's the finish I'm betting on. He may have flown the track at all the turns,--at this last turn as well as the others,--but when it comes to the home stretch, you watch him put his shoulder into the collar and remember what I said. I hope we'll both be there to see." "So be it," Lansdale acquiesced. "It isn't in me to smash any man's ideal. And if anything could make me have faith in my kind, I think your belief in the inherent virtue of the race would work the miracle." Bartrow laughed again, and pushed back his chair. "It does you a whole lot of good to play at being a cold-blooded man-hater, doesn't it? But it's no go. Your practice doesn't gee with your preaching. Let's go out on the porch and smoke, if it won't be too cool for you." They left the dining-room together and strolled out through the crowded lobby, lighting their cigars at the news-stand in passing. There was a convention of some sort in progress, and a sprinkling of the delegates, with red silk badges displayed, was scattered among the chairs on the veranda. Bartrow found two chairs a little apart from the decorated ones, faced them, and tilted his own against the railing. When his cigar was well alight he bethought him of a neglected duty. "By the way, old man, I've never had the grace to say 'much obliged' for your neatness and dispatch in carrying out my wire order. I suppose you've forgotten it months ago, but I haven't. It was good of you. Connie wrote me about it at the time, and she said a whole lot of pretty things about the way you climbed into the breach." "Did she?" Lansdale's habitual reserve fell away from him like a cast garment, and if Bartrow had been less oblivious to face readings he might have seen that which would have made his heart ache. But he saw nothing and went on, following his own lead. "Yes; she said you took hold like a good fellow, and hung on like a dog to a root,--that is, she didn't say that, of course, but that was the sense of it. I'm obliged, a whole lot." "You needn't be. The obligation is on my side. It was a pleasure to try to help Miss Elliott, even if I wasn't able to accomplish anything worth mentioning."