til the track is
repaired, and the wreck cleared. Your going back will make no
difference in the right-of-way matter; I can arrange for a meeting with
Grofield at any time--in Angels, if you prefer."

"Yes," said Lidgerwood absently, "I am going back from here."

"Then I guess I may as well ride down to my jumping-off place with my
men; you don't need us any longer. Make my adieux to Miss Brewster and
the young ladies, will you, please?"

Lidgerwood stood at the break in the track for some minutes after the
retreating relief-train had disappeared around the steep shoulder of the
great hill; was still standing there when Bradford, having once more
side-tracked the service-car on the abandoned mine spur, came down to
ask for orders.

"We'll hold the siding until Dawson shows up with the wrecking-train,"
was the superintendent's reply, "He ought to be here before long. Where
are Miss Brewster and her friends?"

"They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the Jap launder the car a
little before they move in."

There was another interval of delay, and Lidgerwood held aloof from the
group at the fire, pacing a slow sentry beat up and down beside the
ditched train, and pausing at either turn to listen for the signal of
Dawson's coming. It sounded at length: a series of shrill
whistle-shrieks, distance-softened, and presently the drumming of
hasting wheels.

The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped
off to join the superintendent.

"Not so bad for my part of it, this time," was his comment, when he had
looked the wreck over. Then he asked the inevitable question: "What did
it?"

Lidgerwood beckoned him down the line and showed him the sprung rail.
Dawson examined it carefully before he rose up to say: "Why didn't they
spring it the other way, if they wanted to make a thorough job of it?
That would have put the train into the river."

Lidgerwood's reply was as laconic as the query. "Because the trap was
set for my car, going west; not for the passenger, going east."

"Of course," said the draftsman, as one properly disgusted with his own
lack of perspicacity. Then, after another and more searching scrutiny,
in which the headlight glare of his own engine was helped out by the
burning of half a dozen matches: "Whoever did that, knew his business."

"How do you know?"

"Little things. A regular spike-puller claw-bar was used--the marks of
its heel are still in the ties; the place was cho