s in his bunk-room when he called to Bromley, who was
checking the way-bills for the lately arrived material.

"Oh, I say, Loudon; has that canyon path been dug out again?--where the
slide was?"

"Sure," said Bromley, without looking up. Then: "You're going to walk?"

"How else would I get there?" returned Ballard, who still seemed to be
labouring with his handicap of moroseness.

The assistant did not reply, but a warm flush crept up under the sunburn
as he went on checking the way-bills. Later, when Ballard swung out to
go to the Craigmiles's, the man at the desk let him pass with a brief
"So-long," and bent still lower over his work.

Under much less embarrassing conditions, Ballard would have been
prepared to find himself breathing an atmosphere of constraint when he
joined the Castle 'Cadia house-party on the great tree-pillared portico
of the Craigmiles mansion. But the embarrassment, if any there were, was
all his own. The colonel was warmly hospitable; under her outward
presentment of cheerful mockery, Elsa was palpably glad to see him; Miss
Cauffrey was gently reproachful because he had not let them send Otto
and the car to drive him around from the canyon; and the various guests
welcomed him each after his or her kind.

During the ante-dinner pause the talk was all of the engineer's prompt
snuffing-out of the cattle raid, and the praiseful comment on the little
_coup de main_ was not marred by any reference to the mistaken zeal
which had made the raid possible. More than once Ballard found himself
wondering if the colonel and Elsa, Bigelow and Blacklock, had conspired
generously to keep the story of his egregious blunder from reaching the
others. If they had not, there was a deal more charity in human nature
than the most cheerful optimist ever postulated, he concluded.

At the dinner-table the enthusiastic _rapport_ was evenly sustained.
Ballard took in the elder of the Cantrell sisters; and Wingfield, who
sat opposite, quite neglected Miss Van Bryck in his efforts to make an
inquisitive third when Miss Cantrell insistently returned to the
exciting topic of the Carson capture--which she did after each separate
endeavour on Ballard's part to escape the enthusiasm.

"Your joking about it doesn't make it any less heroic, Mr. Ballard," was
one of Miss Cantrell's phrasings of the song of triumph. "Just think of
it--three of you against eleven desperate outlaws!"

"Three of us, a carefully planned ambush,