,
and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a
moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back."

"No, I'm going, Albert," said she, when he was gone to his own office.
"But first you ought to know that man told papa something--about me."

"How do you know about this?" said I.

"Papa asked me--if I had--any complaints to make--of Mr. Elkins's
treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?"

"What did you tell your father?" I asked.

"What could I tell him but 'No'?" she exclaimed. "And I just had a
heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has
acted; and if his fever hadn't begun to run up so, I'd have got the
rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his
mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I
gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain;
and now I'm going! But, mind, this last is a secret."

And so she went away.

"Where's Antonia?" asked Jim, returning.

"Gone," said I.

"I wanted to talk further about this matter."

"I don't like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over."

"Wait until we pass Wednesday," said Jim, "and we'll wring his neck.
What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man
in his dotage!--I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys
wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn't miss
that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble
with the track.--No, I don't like it, either. Wasn't it thoughtful of
Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it;
but if it had gone on--we can't stand a third solar-plexus blow...."

The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell
more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant
thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather.
The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under
such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no
trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by
the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker
close, I went into President Elkins's office to take him home with me.
As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through
the outer entrance.

"Say," said he, "I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some
busine