you when I couldn't get at him," the
ex-engineman began abruptly. "There's something hatching, but I can't
find out what it is. Are you thinking about goin' out on the road
anywhere to-night, Mr. Lidgerwood?"

Lidgerwood's decision was taken on the instant.

"Yes; I think I shall go west in my car in an hour or so. Why?"

"There ain't any 'why,' I guess, if you feel like goin'. But what I
don't savvy is why them fellows back yonder in the waitin'-room are so
dead anxious to find out if you _are_ goin'."

As he spoke, a man who had been skulking behind a truck-load of express
freight, so near that he could have touched either of them with an
out-stretched arm, withdrew silently in the direction of the lunch-room.
He was a tall man with stooping shoulders, and his noiseless retreat
was cautiously made, yet not quite cautiously enough, since Judson's
sharp eyes marked the shuffling figure vanishing in the shadow cast by
the over-hanging shelter roof of the station.

"By cripes!--look at that, will you?" he exclaimed, pointing to the
retreating figure. "That's Hallock, and he was listening!"

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"No, that isn't Hallock," he denied. And then, with a bit of the
man-driving rasp in his voice: "See here, Judson, don't you let
McCloskey's prejudices run away with you; make a memorandum of that and
paste it in your hat. I know what you have been instructed to do, and I
have given my consent, but it is with the understanding that you will be
at least as fair as you would be if McCloskey's bias happened to run the
other way. I don't want you to make a case against Hallock unless you
can get proof positive that he is disloyal to the company and to me; and
I'll tell you here and now that I shall be much better pleased if you
can bring me the assurance that he is a true man."

"But that _was_ Hallock," insisted Judson, "or else it was his livin'
double."

"No; follow him and you'll see for yourself. It was more like that Ruby
Gulch operator who quit in a quarrel with McCloskey a week or two ago.
What is his name?--Sheffield."

Judson hastened down the platform to satisfy himself, and Lidgerwood
mounted the stair to his office. Grady was still pounding the keys of
the type-writer on the batch of letters given him in the busy hour
following his return from supper, and the superintendent turned his back
upon the clicking activities and went to stand at the window, from which
he could look down upon th