of the cut-off tunnel.

She ignored the care-taking phrase as if she had not heard it.

"Mr. Wingfield?--you have kept him from getting interested in the--in
the----"

Ballard nodded.

"He is interested, beyond doubt. But for the present moment I have kept
him from adding anything to Miss Dosia's artless gossip. Will you permit
me to suggest that it was taking rather a long chance?--your bringing
him down here?"

"I know; but I couldn't help it. Dosia would have brought him on your
invitation. I did everything I could think of to obstruct; and when they
had beaten me, I made a party affair of it. You'll have to forgive me
for spoiling an entire working day for you."

"Since it has given me a chance to be with you, I'm only too happy in
losing the day," he said; and he meant it. But he let her know the worst
in the other matter in an added sentence. "I'm afraid the mischief is
done in Wingfield's affair, in spite of everything."

"How?" she asked, and the keen anxiety in the grey eyes cut him to the
heart.

He told her briefly of the chance arousing of Wingfield's curiosity, and
of the playwright's expressed determination to fathom the mystery of the
table-smashing stone. Her dismay was pathetic.

"You should never have taken him into your office," she protested
reproachfully. "He was sure to be reminded of Dosia's story there."

"I didn't foresee that, and he was beginning to gossip with the workmen.
I knew it wouldn't be long before he would get the story of the
happenings out of the men--with all the garnishings."

"You _must_ find a way to stop him," she insisted. "If you could only
know what terrible consequences are wrapped up in it!"

He waited until a stone block, dangling in the clutch of the
derrick-fall above its appointed resting-place on the growing wall of
masonry, had been lowered into the cement bed prepared for it before he
said, soberly: "That is the trouble--I _don't_ know. And, short of
quarrelling outright with Wingfield, I don't think of any effective way
of muzzling him."

"No; you mustn't do that. There is misery enough and enmity enough,
without making any more. I'll try to keep him away."

"You will fail," he prophesied, with conviction. "Mr. Wingfield calls
himself a builder of plots; but I can assure you from this one day's
observation of him that he would much rather unravel a plot than build
one."

She was silent while the workmen were swinging another great stone out
ov