's all; except that I would swear that I heard the 'slither' of a
mackintosh just as the blow fell that knocked me down and out.

"Heavens, Loudon! It's too grossly unbelievable! Why, man, he saved your
life after the fact, risking his own in a mad drive down here from
Castle 'Cadia in the car to do it! You wouldn't have lived until morning
if he hadn't come."

"It is unbelievable, as you say; and yet it isn't, when you have
surrounded all the facts. What is the reason, the only reason, why
Colonel Craigmiles should resort to all these desperate expedients?"

"Delay, of course; time to get his legal fight shaped up in the courts."

"Exactly. If he can hold us back long enough, the dam will never be
completed. He knows this, and Mr. Pelham knows it, too. Unhappily for
us, the colonel has found a way to ensure the delay. The work can't go
on without a chief of construction."

"But, good Lord, Loudon, you're not the 'Big Boss'; and, besides, the
man loves you like a son! Why should he try to kill you one minute and
move heaven and earth to save your life the next?"

Bromley shook his head sorrowfully.

"That is what made me say what I did about not wanting to tell you,
Breckenridge. That crack over the head wasn't meant for me; it was meant
for you. If it had not been so dark under the hill that night--but it
was; pocket-dark in the shadow of the pines. And he knew you'd be coming
along that path on your way back to camp--knew you'd be coming, and
wasn't expecting anybody else. Don't you see?"

Ballard jumped up and began to pace the floor.

"My God!" he ejaculated; "I was his guest; I had just broken bread at
his table! Bromley, when he went out to lie in wait for me, he left me
talking with his daughter! It's too horrible!"

Bromley had stood the eleven cartridges, false and true, in a curving
row on the table. The crooking line took the shape of a huge
interrogation point.

"Wingfield thought he had solved all the mysteries, but the darkest of
them remains untouched," he commented. "How can the genial, kindly,
magnanimous man we know, or think we know, be such a fiend incarnate?"
Then he broke ground again in the old field. "Will you do now what I
begged you to do at first?--throw up this cursed job and go away?"

Ballard stopped short in his tramping and his answer was an explosive
"No!"

"That is half righteous anger, and half something else. What is the
other half, Breckenridge?" And when Ballard did n