enty
minutes after seven and breakfasting by appointment with Magnus Derrick
and Osterman at the Yosemite House, on Main Street.

The conference of the committee with the lawyers took place in a front
room of the Yosemite, one of the latter bringing with him his clerk, who
made a stenographic report of the proceedings and took carbon copies
of all letters written. The conference was long and complicated, the
business transacted of the utmost moment, and it was not until two
o'clock that Annixter found himself at liberty.

However, as he and Magnus descended into the lobby of the hotel, they
were aware of an excited and interested group collected about the swing
doors that opened from the lobby of the Yosemite into the bar of the
same name. Dyke was there--even at a distance they could hear the
reverberation of his deep-toned voice, uplifted in wrath and furious
expostulation. Magnus and Annixter joined the group wondering, and all
at once fell full upon the first scene of a drama.

That same morning Dyke's mother had awakened him according to his
instructions at daybreak. A consignment of his hop poles from the north
had arrived at the freight office of the P. and S. W. in Bonneville, and
he was to drive in on his farm wagon and bring them out. He would have a
busy day.

"Hello, hello," he said, as his mother pulled his ear to arouse him;
"morning, mamma."

"It's time," she said, "after five already. Your breakfast is on the
stove."

He took her hand and kissed it with great affection. He loved his mother
devotedly, quite as much as he did the little tad. In their little
cottage, in the forest of green hops that surrounded them on every hand,
the three led a joyous and secluded life, contented, industrious, happy,
asking nothing better. Dyke, himself, was a big-hearted, jovial man who
spread an atmosphere of good-humour wherever he went. In the evenings he
played with Sidney like a big boy, an older brother, lying on the bed,
or the sofa, taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a
great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the
air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a
circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let
her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little
screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one
foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, to
the