inding
course of the little car until the dodging tail-light had crossed the
temporary bridge below the camp, to be lost among the shoulders of the
opposite hills. The elder Fitzpatrick was at his elbow when he turned to
go in.

"There's hope f'r the little man, Misther Ballard?" he inquired
anxiously.

"Good hope, now, I think, Michael."

"That's the brave wor-rd. The min do be sittin' up in th' bunk-shanties
to hear ut. 'Twas all through the camp the minut' they brought him in.
There isn't a man av thim that wouldn't go t'rough fire and wather f'r
Misther Bromley--and that's no joke. Is there annything I can do?"

"Nothing, thank you. Tell the yard watchman to stay within call, and
I'll send for you if you're needed."

With this provision for the possible need, the young chief kept the
vigil alone, sitting where he could see the face of the still
unconscious victim of fate, or tramping three steps and a turn in the
adjoining office room when sleep threatened to overpower him.

It was a time for calm second thought; for a reflective weighing of the
singular and ominous conditions partly revealed in the week agone talk
with Elsa Craigmiles. That she knew more than she was willing to tell
had been plainly evident in that first evening on the tree-pillared
portico at Castle 'Cadia; but beyond this assumption the unanswerable
questions clustered quickly, opening door after door of speculative
conjecture in the background.

What was the motive behind the hurled stone which had so nearly bred a
tragedy on his first evening at Elbow Canyon? He reflected that he had
always been too busy to make personal enemies; therefore, the attempt
upon his life must have been impersonal--must have been directed at the
chief engineer of the Arcadia Company. Assuming this, the chain of
inference linked itself rapidly. Was Macpherson's death purely
accidental?--or Braithwaite's? If not, who was the murderer?--and why
was the colonel's daughter so evidently determined to shield him?

The answer, the purely logical answer, pointed to one man--her
father--and thereupon became a thing to be scoffed at. It was more than
incredible; it was blankly unthinkable.

The young Kentuckian, descendant of pioneers who had hewn their
beginnings out of the primitive wilderness, taking life as they found
it, was practical before all things else. Villains of the Borgian strain
no longer existed, save in the unreal world of the novelist or the
playwr