nferences between the hired and the hirer were frequent and prolonged.
If we shall overhear one of them--the final one, held on the day of the
Farleys' return to Paradise and Warwick Lodge--it will suffice.

"It looks easy enough, as you say, Mr. Gordon," the human ferret is
explaining; "but in point of fact there's nothing to work on--less than
nothing. Three years ago you had no regular repair gang, and when a job
of that kind was to be done, any Tom, Dick or Harry picked up a helper
or two and did it. But I think you can bet on one thing: none of the
three men who made that inspection is at present in your employ."

"In other words, you'd like to get back to your job at Pullman," snaps
Tom.

"Oh, I ain't in any hurry! That job looks as if it would keep for a
while longer. But I don't like to take a man's good money for nothing;
and that's about what I'm doing here."

Tom swings around to his desk and writes a check.

"I suppose you have no further report to make on the woman?"

"Nothing of any importance. I told you where she is living--in a little
cabin up on the mountain in a settlement called Pine Knob."

"Yes; but I found that out for myself."

"So you did. Well, she's living straight, as far as anybody knows; and
if you can believe what you hear, the only follower she ever had was a
young mountaineer named Kincaid. I looked him up; he's been gone from
these parts for something over three years. He is ranching in Indian
Territory, and only came back last week. You can check him off your
list."

"He was never on, and I have no list," says the manhunter grittingly.
"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Beckham," passing the signed check to
the other, "I shall begin where you leave off, and end by finding my
man."

"I hope you do, I'm sure," says the Pinkerton, moved by the liberal
figure of the check. "And if there's anything more the Agency can do--"

In the afternoon of the same day, when the self-dismissed detective was
speeding northward toward Chicago and the car-burners, Tom saddled the
bay and rode long and hard over a bad mountain cart track to the hamlet
of Pine Knob. It was a measure of his abandonment that he was breaking
his promise to Ardea; and another of his reckless singleness of purpose
that he rode brazenly through the little settlement to Nan's door,
dismounted and entered as if he had right.

The cabin was untenanted, but he found Nan sitting on the slab step of a
rude porch at the bac