situation. I shall move that three
of us retain lawyers to defend us all and advise us as to our joint
course, for I apprehend Mr. Arthur Ferris will be a King Shark if
he rules over us."

While the endangered officials burned the midnight oil, the
hollow-eyed Arthur Ferris was hidden at the Waldorf-Astoria with
that sage statesman Senator Dunham. It was long after midnight
when Dunham dismissed his nephew. He had half pooh-poohed away the
fears of the young schemer.

"Of course, the girl is rattled. You see, no one but you and
I know of the marriage. It gives you an iron hold upon her. She
will undoubtedly be advised to let our Western friends escort Mr.
Worthington's body on to Detroit. There, of course, she will be
met by the family lawyers.

"After the necessary preliminaries there, one of them will escort
her on here--and--I will be within reach. She evidently wishes to
have the affair of the marriage made public, some time later. If
you made Worthington do the right thing about the will, and all
that, you will come out all right.

"But do not cross her wishes. You cannot spring this marriage on
the public without endangering all our interests. My lawyers here
will look out for the big deal. You can bring the estate's lawyer
to me, and, when you have reduced your wife to a passive mood,
we three can clue up all the private affairs. I will be near you.
I think you are borrowing trouble. As for young Witherspoon, let
him be a little huffy. I can soon whip in those railroad chiefs of
his. Have little to do with him, but be civil--that's all.

"Don't antagonize him. He might prove an ugly customer."

While the tide of intrigue ebbed and flowed around the great
company's headquarters, far away beyond the Rockies, on past the
dreary plains and the uplifted minarets of the Columbia, seated by
the coffin of her dead father, Alice Ferris gazed down in silence
upon the face of the stern old man.

Among the silent watchers, gazing in the fair face of the orphaned
girl, there was no one who knew her other than as Alice Worthington.

The calm majesty of Death had swept away from the dead capitalist's
face all the anxious look of money cares. The pale lips were silent
now, behind his broad brow the busy brain was settled forever.

To the frontier clergyman, to the company's Western superintendent,
to the few care-worn women who had offered their services, the strong
face and tearless eyes of the beautiful mourne