iter. And if, by any stretch of imagination, they might still be
supposed to exist....

Ballard brushed the supposition impatiently aside when he thought of the
woman he loved.

"Anything but that!" he exclaimed, breaking the silence of the four bare
walls for the sake of hearing the sound of his own voice. "And, besides,
the colonel himself is a living, breathing refutation of any such
idiotic notion. All the same, if it is not her father she is trying to
shield, who, in the name of all that is good, can it be? And why should
Colonel Craigmiles, or anyone else, be so insanely vindictive as to
imagine that the killing of a few chiefs of construction will cut any
figure with the company which hires them?"

These perplexing questions were still unanswered when the graying dawn
found him dozing in his chair, with the camp whistles sounding the early
turn-out, and Bromley conscious and begging feebly for a drink of water.

XVII

THE DERRICK FUMBLES

Bromley had been a week in hospital at the great house in the upper
valley, and was recovering as rapidly as a clean-living, well-ancestored
man should, when Ballard was surprised one morning by a descent of the
entire Castle 'Cadia garrison, lacking only the colonel and Miss
Cauffrey, upon the scene of activities at the dam.

The chief of construction had to flog himself sharply into the
hospitable line before he could make the invaders welcome. He had a
workingman's shrewd impatience of interruptions; and since the accident
which had deprived him of his assistant, he had been doing double duty.
On this particular morning he was about to leave for a flying round of
the camps on the railroad extension; but he reluctantly countermanded
the order for the locomotive when he saw Elsa picking the way for her
guests among the obstructions in the stone yard.

"Please--oh, please don't look so inhospitable!" she begged, in
well-simulated dismay, when the irruption of sight-seers had fairly
surrounded him. "We have driven and fished and climbed mountains and
played children's games at home until there was positively nothing else
to do. Pacify him, Cousin Janet--he's going to warn us off!"

Ballard laughingly disclaimed any such ungracious intention, and
proceeded to prove his words by deeds. Young Blacklock and Bigelow were
easily interested in the building details; the women were given an
opportunity to see the inside workings of the men's housekeeping in the
shacks,