rrespondence, and so forgot it.

It was nine o'clock when the night operator came on duty; and being a
careful man, he not only looked first to his sending hook, but was
thoughtful enough to run over the accumulation of messages waiting to be
transmitted, to the end that he might give precedence to the most
important. And when he came to Hunnicott's cipher with the
thrice-underlined "RUSH" written across its face, and had marked the hour
of its handing in, he had the good sense to hang up the entire wire
business of the railroad until the thing was safely out of his office.

It was half-past nine when the all-important cipher got itself written out
in the headquarters office at the capital; and for two anxious hours the
receiving operator tried by all means in his power to find the general
counsel--tried and failed. For, to make the chain of mishaps complete in
all its links, Kent and Loring were spending the evening at Miss Portia
Van Brock's, having been bidden to meet a man they were both willing to
cultivate--Oliver Marston, the lieutenant-governor. And for this cause it
wanted but five minutes of midnight when Kent burst into Loring's bedroom
on the third floor of the Clarendon, catastrophic news in hand.

"For heaven's sake, read that!" he gasped; and Loring sat on the edge of
the bed to do it.

"So! they've sprung their mine at last: this is what Senator Duvall was
trying to sell us," he said quietly, when he had mastered the purport of
Hunnicott's war news.

Kent had caught his second wind in the moment of respite, and was settling
into the collar in a way to strain the working harness to the breaking
point.

"It's a put-up job from away back," he gritted. "If I'd had the sense of a
pack-mule I should have been on the lookout for just such a trap as this.
Look at the date of that message!"

The general manager did look, and shook his head. "'Received, 3:45, P.M.;
Forwarded, 9:17, P.M.' That will cost somebody his job. What do we do?"

"We get busy at the drop of the hat. Luckily, we have the news, though
I'll bet high it wasn't Hawk's fault that this message came through with
no more than eight hours' delay. Get into your clothes, man! The minutes
are precious, now!"

Loring began to dress while Kent walked the floor in a hot fit of
impatience.

"The mastodonic cheek of the thing!" he kept repeating, until Loring
pulled him down with another quiet remark.

"Tell me what we have to do, David. I am a