ish you to get in
conversation with this Philip Eaton. It will probably be useful if you
let Harriet talk with him too. She would get impressions helpful to me
which you can't."

The girl started with surprise but recovered at once. "Yes, Father,"
she said.

"What, sir?" Avery ventured to protest.

CHAPTER III

MISS DORNE MEETS EATON

Dorne motioned Avery to the aisle, where already some of the
passengers, having settled their belongings in their sections, were
beginning to wander through the cars seeking acquaintances or players
to make up a card game. Eaton, however, was not among these. On the
contrary, when these approached him in his section, he frankly avoided
chance of their speaking to him, by an appearance of complete immersion
in his own concerns. The Englishman directly across the aisle from
Eaton clearly was not likely to speak to him, or to anybody else,
without an introduction; the red-haired man, "D. S.," however, seemed a
more expansive personality. Eaton, seeing "D. S." look several times
in his direction, pulled a newspaper from the pocket of his overcoat
and engrossed himself in it; the newspaper finished, he opened his
traveling bag and produced a magazine.

But as the train settled into the steady running which reminded of the
days of travel ahead during which the half-dozen cars of the train must
create a world in which it would be absolutely impossible to avoid
contact with other people, Eaton put the magazine into his traveling
bag, took from the bag a handful of cigars with which he filled a
plain, uninitialed cigar-case, and went toward the club and observation
car in the rear. As he passed through the sleeper next to him,--the
last one,--Harriet Dorne glanced up at him and spoke to her father;
Dorne nodded but did not look up. Eaton went on into the wide-windowed
observation-room beyond, which opened onto the rear platform protected
on three sides.

The observation-room was nearly empty. The sleet which had been
falling when they left Seattle had changed to huge, heavy flakes of
fast-falling snow, which blurred the windows, obscured the landscape
and left visible only the two thin black lines of track that, streaming
out behind them, vanished fifty feet away in the white smother. The
only occupants of the room were a young woman who was reading a
magazine, and an elderly man. Eaton chose a seat as far from these two
as possible.

He had been there only a few minut