lead him to the
bar of justice as that father's accuser, but even in that hard case he
must not falter. He said to himself, in a fresh access of passionate
determination, that though he might have to blush for his father,
Patricia should not be made ashamed for her lover.

Upon leaving the club, he paused long enough to remember that he was in
no fit frame of mind to risk an immediate meeting with his father. To
make even a chance meeting impossible, he crossed the street, and,
passing through the Capitol grounds, strolled aimlessly out one of the
residence avenues until he came to the open country beyond the suburbs.

It was quite late in the afternoon when he re-entered the city by
another street and boarded a trolley car for the down-town centre. The
long afternoon tramp, and the conclusions it had bred, made it
imperative for him to see Gantry before the traffic manager should
leave his office for the day. His business with the railroad man was
purely personal. He meant to ask Gantry a few pointed questions
requiring such answers as friendship may demand. If Gantry's replies
were such as he feared they would be, he would seek his father and come
at once to a plain understanding with him.

The trolley car dropped him within a square of the railway station, on
the second floor of which Gantry had his business office. The shortest
way to the Sierra Avenue end of the station building was through the
great train-shed. Half-way up the platform Blount met the west-bound
Overland steaming in from the eastern yards. At the Sierra Avenue
crossing the yard crew was cutting off a private car. Blount saw the
number on the medallion, "008," and noted half absently the rich
window-hangings and the polished brass platform railings. A car
inspector in greasy overalls and jumper was tapping the wheels with his
long-handled hammer.

"Whose car is this?" asked Blount.

"'Tis Misther McVickar's, sorr--the vice-prisidint av the coompany,"
said the man.

Blount turned away, saying something which the hammer-man mistook for a
word of thanks. So the vice-president had come, hastening upon the wing
of occasions, it seemed. And in the light of the overheard conversation
in the club smoking-room, it was only too easy to guess his errand in
the Sage-brush capital. He had come to make such terms as he could with
the man who was going to hold him up.

VII

A BATTLE ROYAL

Having already convinced himself that the time was ripe