ters.
Gantry, the Gantry whom he had been calling hard names, setting him down
as at best a lovable but wholly unprincipled time-server, had pointed a
possible way to retrieval, heroically effacing himself that the way
might be unobstructed. With the warm blood leaping again, Blount
straightened himself in his chair. He would go to his father, not as a
son begging a boon, but as a man demanding his rights. The machine had
seen fit to throw down the challenge by burglarizing his office and
robbing him. Very good; there were five days remaining in which to
strike back. He would lift the challenge, and if his reasonable demand
should be refused, he would drop the railroad crusade and break into the
wider field of bossism and machine-made majorities, ploughing and
turning it up to the light as he could.

The fiery resolution had scarcely been taken when he heard the door of
Collins's outer room open and close, and a moment later the good-looking
young stenographer came in, bringing a breath of the crisp autumn
evening with him.

"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blount!" he exclaimed. "I saw the
office lights from the street, and thought somebody had left them
turned on. Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes; sit down," said Blount crisply, and then: "Collins, what do you do
with yourself when I am out of town?"

"I stay here most of the time. I went out early this afternoon, but I
don't often do it."

"Were you here all day yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Was there anything unusual going on?"

The young man looked away as if he expected to find his answer in the
farther corner of the room.

"I don't know as you'd call it unusual," he replied half-hesitantly.
"There were a good many callers. Shall I bring you the list?"

"Yes."

The stenographer went out to his desk and brought back a slip of paper
with the names.

"This man Gryson," said Blount, running his eye over the memorandum, "I
see you've got him down four or five times. What did he want?"

"He wouldn't tell me. But he was all kinds of anxious to see you. That
was why I telegraphed you; I couldn't get rid of him any other way."

"Let me see the copy of the message."

Again Collins made a journey to his desk, returning with the
telegraph-impression book open at the proper page. Blount glanced at the
copy of the brief message: "Thomas Gryson wants to know when he can be
sure of finding you here," and handed the book back.

"How did you send that?" he asked.