"I think," said Regan softly, "he's been getting blamed few eggs and less fresh air than he ought to have had, trying to make good on that loan. And I think he's a better man than I thought he was. A fellow that would do that is white enough not to fall very far off the right of way. I guess you won't make any mistake as far as trusting him goes." "No," said Carleton, "I don't think I will." And therein Carleton and Regan were both right and wrong. P. Walton wasn't--but just a minute, we're over-running our holding orders--P. Walton is in the block ahead. The month hadn't helped P. Walton much physically, even if it had helped him more than he, perhaps, realized in Carleton's estimation. And the afternoon following Regan's and Carleton's conversation, alone in the room, for Halstead was out, he was hanging over his desk a pretty sick man, though his pen moved steadily with the work before him, when the connecting door from the super's office opened, and Bob Donkin, the despatcher, came hurriedly in. "Where's the super?" he asked quickly. "I don't know," said P. Walton. "He went out in the yards with Regan half an hour ago. I guess he'll be back shortly." "Well, you'd better try and find him, and give him this. Forty-two'll be along in twenty minutes." Donkin slapped a tissue on the desk, and hurried back to his key in the despatchers' room. P. Walton picked up the tissue and read it. It was from the first station west on the line. Gopher Butte, 3.16 P. M. J. H. CARLETON, Supt. Hill Division: No. 42 held up by two train robbers three miles west of here Express messenger Nulty in game fight killed one and captured the other in the express car. Arrange for removal of body, and have sheriff on hand to take prisoner into custody on arrival in Big Cloud. Everything O.K. McCURDY, Conductor. P. Walton, with the telegram in his hand, rose from his chair and made for the hall through the super's room, reading it a second time as he went along. There had been some pretty valuable express stuff on the train, as he knew from the correspondence that had passed through his hands--and he smiled a little grimly. "Well, they certainly missed a good one," he muttered to himself. "I think I'd rather be the dead one than the other. It'll go hard with him. Twenty years, I guess." He stepped out into the hall to the head of the stairs--and met Carleton coming up. Carleton, quick as a steel trap, getting the gist of the message in a glance, brushed by P. Walton, hurried along the hall to the despatchers' room--and the next moment a wide-eyed call boy was streaking uptown for the sheriff, and breathlessly imparting the tale of the hold-up, embellished with gory imagination, to every one he met.