ellbinding from
some platform or other. There is something doing--something that the
baa-lambs don't suspect. And Mr. Pelham and his little inside ring are
doing it."

Ballard got up and went to the door with the assistant.

"And that isn't the worst of it, Loudon," he said, with an air of sudden
and vehement conviction. "This isn't an irrigation scheme at all, it's a
stock deal from beginning to end. Mr. Pelham knows about that hollow
tooth; he knew about it before I told him. You mark my words: we'll
never get orders to plug that tunnel!"

Bromley nodded agreement. "I've been working my way around to that, too.
All right; so let it be. My resignation goes in to-morrow morning, and I
take it yours will?"

"It will, for a fact; I've been half sorry I didn't saw it off short
with Mr. Pelham when I had him here. Good-night. Don't let them persuade
you to go over the pass. Stop at Ackerman's, and get what sleep you
can."

Bromley promised; and a little later, Ballard, sitting in the moonlight
on the office porch, heard the trains pull out of the yard and saw the
twinkling red eyes of the tail-lights vanish among the rounded hills.

"Good-by, Mr. Howard Pelham. I shouldn't be shocked speechless if you
never came back to Arcadia," he muttered, apostrophising the departing
president of Arcadia Irrigation. Then he put away the business
entanglement and let his gaze wander in the opposite direction; toward
the great house in the upper valley.

At the first eastward glance he sprang up with an exclamation of
astonishment. The old king's palace was looming vast in the moonlight,
with a broad sea of silver to take the place of the brown valley level
in the bridging of the middle distance. But the curious thing was the
lights, unmistakable electrics, as aforetime, twinkling through the
tree-crownings of the knoll.

The Kentuckian left the porch and went to the edge of the mesa cliff to
look down upon the flood, rising now by imperceptible gradations as the
enlarging area of the reservoir lake demanded more water. The lapping
tide was fully half way up the back wall of the dam, which meant that
the colonel's power plant at the mouth of the upper canyon must be
submerged past using. Yet the lights were on at Castle 'Cadia.

While he was speculating over this new mystery, the head-lamps of an
automobile came in sight on the roundabout road below the dam, and
presently a huge tonneau car, well filled, rolled noiselessly over