said you'd claimed my message. Say, hand it over
now! What were you up to? What did you do that for?"

Eaton felt he was paling as he faced the blustering smaller man. He
realized that the passengers he could see--those at the smaller
tables--already had judged his explanation and found him wanting; the
others unquestionably had done the same. Avery was gazing up at him
with a sort of contented triumph.

"The telegram was for me, Conductor," he repeated.

"Get that telegram, Conductor!" the stout man demanded again.

"I suppose," Connery suggested, "you have letters or a card or
something, Mr. Eaton, to show your relationship to Lawrence Hillward."

"No; I have not."

The man asserting himself as Hillward grunted.

"Have you anything to show you are Lawrence Hillward?" Eaton demanded
of him.

"Did you tell any one on the train that your name was Hillward before
you wanted this telegram?"

It was Harriet Dorne's voice which interposed; and Eaton felt his pulse
leap as she spoke for him.

"I never gave any other name than Lawrence Hillward," the other
declared.

Connery gazed from one claimant to the other. "Will you give this
gentleman the telegram?" he asked Eaton.

"I will not."

"Then I shall furnish him another copy; it was received here on the
train by our express-clerk as the operator. I'll go forward and get
him another copy."

"That's for you to decide," Eaton said; and as though the matter was
closed for him, he resumed his seat. He was aware that, throughout the
car, the passengers were watching him curiously; he would have foregone
the receipt of the telegram rather than that attention should be
attracted to him in this way. Avery was still gazing at him with that
look of quiet satisfaction; Eaton had not dared, as yet, to look at
Harriet Dorne. When, constraining himself to a manner of indifference,
he finally looked her way, she began to chat with him as lightly as
before. Whatever effect the incident just closed had had upon the
others, it appeared to have had none at all upon her.

"Are you ready to go back to our car now, Harriet?" Avery inquired when
she had finished her breakfast, though Eaton was not yet through.

"Surely there's no hurry about anything to-day," the girl returned.
They waited until Eaton had finished.

"Shall we all go back to the observation car and see if there's a walk
down the track or whether it's snowed over?" she said impartially to
the two. Th