innings. I should like
to stay, of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement and
leave the field to the enemy."

Pronouncing "Mr. Hobart" without emphasis, the butler vanished. The
newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat.
He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut,
classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner
to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His
ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized. Even his
voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that Hobart
had inherited with his nice taste.

When Miss Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager of
the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed
genially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality was
genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in
it a veiled taunt. To him it seemed to say:

"Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, though
he has been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as great
as mine."

In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway's audacity crystallized
in words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. "I
regret that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving
such good company," he said urbanely.

Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the
Consolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the
ownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report that
Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting for
him now at the door.

If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of
repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in
his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it
evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to
criticism than Ridgway would have cared to see.

CHAPTER 2. THE FREEBOOTER

When next Virginia Balfour saw Waring Ridgway she was driving her trap
down one of the hit-or-miss streets of Mesa, where derricks,
shaft-houses, and gray slag-dumps shoulder ornate mansions conglomerate
of many unharmonious details of architecture. To Miss Balfour these
composites and their owners would have been joys unalloyed except for
the microbe of society ambition that was infecting the latter, and
transforming them fr