have ever been, with all my shiverings and
teeth-chatterings. Isn't the stake big enough to warrant your last
desperate play? I'll make it bigger. You are the two men who broke the
rail-joint at Silver Switch. Ah, that hits you, doesn't it?"

"Shut up!" growled the tall man, with a frightful imprecation. But the
smaller of the two was silent.

Lidgerwood's grin was ghastly, but it was nevertheless a teeth-baring of
defiance.

"You curs!" he scoffed. "You haven't even the courage of your own
necessities! Why don't you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with
it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now,
while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for
those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your
flimsy disguise: _I can call you both by name_!"

Out in the yard the yellings and shoutings had taken on a new note, and
the windows of the upper room were jarring with the thunder of incoming
trains. Eleanor Brewster heard the new sounds vaguely: the jangle and
clank of the trains, the quick, steady tramp of disciplined men,
snapped-out words of command, the sudden cessation of the riot clamor,
and now a shuffling of feet on the stairway behind her.

Still she could not move; still she was speechless and spell-bound, but
no longer from terror. Her cousin--her lover--how she had misjudged him!
He a coward? This man who was holding his two executioners at bay,
quelling them, cowing them, by the sheer force of the stronger will, and
of a courage that was infinitely greater than theirs?

The shuffling footsteps came nearer, and once again Lidgerwood
straightened himself in his chair, this time with a mighty struggle that
broke the knotted cords and freed him.

"I said I could name you, and I will!" he cried, springing to his feet.
"You," pointing to the smaller man, "you are Pennington Flemister; and
you," wheeling upon the tall man and lowering his voice, "you are Rankin
Hallock!"

The light of the fire in the shop yard had died down until its red glow
no longer drove the shadows from the corners of the room. Eleanor shrank
aside when a dozen men pushed their way into the private office. Then,
suddenly the electric lights went on, and a gruff voice said, "Drop them
guns, you two. The show's over."

It was McCloskey who gave the order, and it was obeyed sullenly. With
the clatter of the weapons on the floor, the door of the outer office
open