blazes, and
walked away down the spur, but when I got out of sight around the first
curve I took to the timber on the butte slope and climbed to a point
from which I could look over into Flemister's carefully built
enclosure."

"Well, what did you see?"

"Much or little, just as you happen to look at it. There are half a
dozen buildings in the yard, and two of them are new and unpainted.
Sizing them up from a distance, I said to myself that the lumber in them
hadn't been very long out of the mill. One of them is evidently the
power-house; it has an iron chimney set in the roof, and the power-plant
was running."

For a little time after Benson had finished his report there was
silence, and Lidgerwood had added many squares to the pencillings on his
desk blotter before he spoke again.

"You say two of the buildings are new; did you make any inquiries about
recent lumber shipments to the Wire-Silver?"

"I did," said the young engineer soberly. "So far as our station records
show, Flemister has had no material, save coal, shipped in over either
the eastern or the western spur for several months."

"Then you believe that he took your bridge-timbers and sawed them up
into lumber?"

"I do--as firmly as I believe that the sun will rise to-morrow. And that
isn't all of it, Lidgerwood. He is the man who has your switch-engine.
As I have said, the power-plant was running while I was up there to-day.
The power is a steam engine, and if you'd stand off and listen to it
you'd swear it was a locomotive pulling a light train up an easy grade.
Of course, I'm only guessing at that, but I think you will agree with me
that the burden of proof lies upon Flemister."

Lidgerwood was nodding slowly. "Yes, on Flemister and some others. Who
are the others, Benson?"

"I have no more guesses coming, and I am too tired to invent any.
Suppose we drop it until to-morrow. I'm afraid it means a fight or a
funeral, and I am not quite equal to either to-night."

For a long time after Benson had gone, Lidgerwood sat staring out of his
office window at the masthead electrics in the railroad yard. Benson's
news had merely confirmed his own and McCloskey's conclusion that some
one in authority was in collusion with the thieves who were raiding the
company. Sooner or later it must come to a grapple, and he dreaded it.

It was deep in the night when he closed his desk and went to the little
room partitioned off in the rear of the private office a