and a Maxim rapid-fire
machine-gun," corrected Ballard. "And you forget that I let them all get
away a few hours later."

"And I--the one person in all this valleyful of possible witnesses who
could have made the most of it--_I_ wasn't there to see," cut in
Wingfield, gloomily. "It is simply catastrophic, Mr. Ballard!"

"Oh, I am sure you could imagine a much more exciting thing--for a
play," laughed the engineer. "Indeed, it's your imagination, and Miss
Cantrell's, that is making a bit of the day's work take on the dramatic
quality. If I were a writing person I should always fight shy of the
real thing. It's always inadequate."

"Much you know about it," grumbled the playwright, from the serene and
lofty heights of craftsman superiority. "And that reminds me: I've been
to your camp, and what I didn't find out about that hoodoo of yours----"

It was Miss Elsa, sitting at Wingfield's right, who broke in with an
entirely irrelevant remark about a Sudermann play; a remark demanding an
answer; and Ballard took his cue and devoted himself thereafter
exclusively to the elder Miss Cantrell. The menace of Wingfield's
literary curiosity was still a menace, he inferred; and he was prepared
to draw its teeth when the time should come.

As on the occasion of the engineer's former visit to Castle 'Cadia,
there was an after-dinner adjournment to the big portico, where the
Japanese butler served the little coffees, and the house-party fell into
pairs and groups in the hammocks and lazy-chairs.

Not to leave a manifest duty undone, Ballard cornered his host at the
dispersal and made, or tried to make, honourable amends for the piece of
mistaken zeal which had led to the attempted cattle-lifting. But in the
midst of the first self-reproachful phrase the colonel cut him off with
genial protests.

"Not anotheh word, my dear suh; don't mention it"--with a benedictory
wave of the shapely hands. "We ratheh enjoyed it. The boys had thei-uh
little blow-out at the county seat; and, thanks to youh generous
intervention, we didn't lose hoof, hide nor ho'n through the
machinations of ouh common enemy. In youh place, Mistuh Ballard, I
should probably have done precisely the same thing--only I'm not sure I
should have saved the old cattleman's property afte' the fact. Try one
of these conchas, suh--unless youh prefer youh pipe. One man in Havana
has been making them for me for the past ten yeahs."

Ballard took the gold-banded cigar as one